Preventing graffiti and vandalism

Crime prevention series, no.9

Abstract

This report discusses criminological theories on vandalism and the problems
created by graffiti and vandalism. It describes planning, management,
architectural and design strategies for minimising vandalism and graffiti on
public transport, in public places, in and around public telephones, in schools
and in public housing.

This report discusses criminological theories on vandalism and the problems
created by graffiti and vandalism. It describes planning, management,
architectural and design strategies for minimising vandalism and graffiti on
public transport, in public places, in and around public telephones, in schools
and in public housing.

Not all graffiti are written by alienated teenagers, and not all vandalism
constitutes wilful damage. Graffiti and vandalism are complex, multi-faceted
problems requiring a range of responses for their solution.

If beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder, nowhere is this more evident
than in the response to graffiti. To many train travellers they are ugly,
anti-social daubs, while for their practitioners they represent an expression of
individuality in an impersonal world.

Some artists, sociologists and writers even regard graffiti as a sophisticated
art form, calling it 'spray can art'. As one 'writer' commented, graffiti has
been with us since our early ancestors painted on cave walls.

And not all graffiti are motivated by a simple desire for self advertisement, a
demand for attention; some are an advertisement for a cause - a propaganda tool.
Many anti-smokers, critics of the consumer society - and even judges - are
supportive of the efforts of BUGA UP (Billboard-Utilising Graffitists Against
Unhealthy Promotions) in defacing billboard advertising for what they consider
to be harmful products.

Graffiti can also be more attractive than what it allegedly defaces. Most of us
have had a laugh out of graffiti at some point, and many dreary hoardings have
been enlivened by illegal murals.

Neither is all vandalism anti-social in nature. A great deal - estimates run as
high as three-quarters - is opportunistic in character; that is, it results from
poor design which cannot handle the demands of wear and tear placed on it; it is
caused by people adapting their environment to make it work better; or it can
simply be caused by kids being kids. With opportunistic vandalism, the offender
might have had no intention of causing damage, but the result is viewed by
others as vandalism.

Examples of opportunistic vandalism are damage to flimsy doors without door
stops in heavily used entrances, short cuts across lawns, holes in fences to
create short cuts, damage to the backs of park benches caused by people
straddling them, doors broken open by curious children, and bikes leaned against
shop windows because there is nowhere else to put them. In most of these cases,
the problem could have been obviated by better design and planning.

One solution to opportunistic damage is to reduce opportunities for graffitists
and vandals to offend, that is, taking a situational approach. This involves
changing the environment in which the offender operates, rather than trying to
change the offender's character or motivation.

The situational approach is based on rational choice theory, that is, it
assumes that offenders freely and actively choose to commit crimes; that the
decision to commit the crime is made in response to the immediate circumstances
and the immediate situation in which an offence is contemplated; and the
motivation to offend is not constant or beyond control. In other words, it is
dependent on a calculation of costs and rewards rather than being the result of
inheriting or acquiring a disposition to offend (Bennet 1986).

In practical terms this means that, instead of concentrating exclusively on
dealing with the factors in a criminal's background or environment which might
be causing him or her to commit a crime - e.g. poverty, poor education,
inadequate socialisation - we design measures directly related to preventing
criminal acts (Jeffery 1971).

The attraction of the situational crime prevention approach is that it can work
in the short term while researchers and policy makers work on other longer-term
solutions to the problem of crime. Situational crime prevention is explained in
greater detail in Crime Prevention: theory and practice (Geason & Wilson 1988).

Examples of opportunity reduction are: using materials that are resistant to
scratching and marking; improved lighting and better design to remove vandals'
cover; security patrols; restrictions on the sale of spray paints; community,
and even electronic, surveillance.

According to the statistics we have quoted, only a quarter of vandalism is
premeditated. Examples of premeditated vandalism include malicious damage of
trains, soccer hooliganism and damage caused by street gangs. This type of
vandalism is more complex than opportunistic vandalism and requires more
sophisticated, longer-term solutions. Consequently, we have not restricted our
study to situational crime prevention strategies, but have investigated social
programs aimed at alleviating some of the boredom and alienation which lead
young people to destroy or decorate their environment.

These longer-term solutions include diverting potential offenders through
programs of activities which keep them occupied and raise their self-esteem;
community and school educational and consciousness-raising programs to promote a
sense of responsibility for, and ownership of, community resources and
facilities; and even providing legal outlets for graffitists to practice their
art.

Finally, we do not regard the eradication of graffiti and vandalism as a
realistic goal; vandalism, like graffiti, has a long history. Rather we aim to
lessen the problem - and as a result lower the fear of crime among the general
community - through a mix of situational strategy and long-term prevention
programs.

In this volume on preventing vandalism and graffiti, we will look at
criminological theories on vandalism, as well as describing planning,
management, architectural and design strategies for minimising vandalism and
graffiti on public transport and in public places, in and around public
telephones, in schools, and in public housing.

Defensible space

In his breakthrough work on crime and vandalism in public housing, Oscar Newman
(1972) propounded the theory of "defensible space". Briefly, Newman found that
crime rates in high-rise buildings where hallways, lifts, lobbies, fire escapes,
roofs etc. were isolated from public scrutiny were higher than in low-rise
buildings. His solution was to re-design apartment buildings so public areas
would be under surveillance by some residents at all times.

Territoriality, natural surveillance and image and milieu are the three major
components of defensible space theory.

Territoriality and natural surveillance refer to a sense of ownership and
control which leads people to mark out and defend their own turf. Defensible
space architecture, by making clear which spaces are private, which are shared
by residents and which are public, discourages intruders and encourages
residents to monitor public and semi-public spaces and challenge those who do
not belong.

Newman also believed defensible space design could counteract the negative
effects of the poor image people in public housing often suffer. Were residents
prouder of their dwellings, they might treat them better, he reasoned. This is
complemented by his notion of "milieu" which insists that a housing estate
should be designed to harmonise with its immediate neighbourhood.

Newman's approach to crime, violence and vandalism in public housing was
situational: he stressed the role architecture and design could play. Other
criminologists saw design measures as only one component of a crime reduction
program which would also include the creation of groups dedicated to preventing
crime among residents, better policing, and improved relationships between the
police and the community (Murray 1983).

In summing up a number of studies on the subject of vandalism, Canter (1984)
concluded that vandalism was a social and physical process - a view that
contradicted Oscar Newman's perspective - in which physical solutions were
presented as the most effective ways of dealing with the problem. In fact, the
criminologists who contributed to this study (Levy-Leboyer 1984) decided that
purely physical solutions were liable to backfire and produce unacceptable
physical environments.

Instead of "target hardening" - for example using strong or shatterproof glass
for windows - Canter suggested "target softening", that is, making potential
targets for vandalism very easy to replace and replacing them cheaply and
quickly. His theory was that, when frequently vandalised objects were replaced,
the vandals' initial response was to attack again, but as the objects were
repeatedly replaced, the vandals' motivation for attacking them declined - a war
of attrition.

Canter suggested recruiting the public into the war against vandalism, an
example being British Telecom's program in which people adopted a telephone,
effectively making vandalism the whole community's rather than just Telecom's
problem.

Manageable space

The role of management has been stressed by others such as Donald Perlgut
(1981,1982). In his theory of "manageable space", Perlgut emphasised the need
for management which assumes most residents can learn and even seek out
responsibility and exercise considerable creativity in participating in their
communities. Architecture, he argued, should respond to people, and the design
welcome and reflect the presence of human beings.

Physical design and kinetic management

Marcus Felson (1987) concentrated on physical design and kinetic management to
reduce crime. He spoke of manipulating the environment to divert flows of
likely offenders away from likely targets, or to restrict them to where they can
be monitored.

Clarke and Felson (1988) have categorised a number of situational crime
prevention strategies thrown up by successful case studies. Some are relevant
to graffiti and vandalism.

Reduce convergence of targets and offenders.

Constrain offenders. This could mean: strengthening social controls for
example through smaller classes in schools to cut down vandalism; restricting
access to facilities or means of committing crimes for example. by placing a ban
on the sale of aerosol paint sprays to juveniles; restricting access to
disinhibitors such as alcohol which might lead people to commit crimes for
example by banning the sale of alcohol at football games.

Protect targets. This can be done by: target hardening, for example using
vandal-resistant materials in public places; restricting access to places where
crimes could be committed for example by padlocks or security guards on train
depots.

Enhance guardianship. This could mean: increasing surveillance, real or
apparent for example through Neighbourhood Watch, citizens' patrols, transport
police; assigning responsibility for example by training employees to challenge
potential offenders; and increasing the capacity to intervene for example] by
giving radios to bus or train drivers.

The offences

Vandalism and graffiti are costing too much, not only in dollars, but through
danger to human lives, increasing fear of crime among the old and the
underprivileged, loss of services, and a general lowering of the quality of life
in our communities.

According to a 1988 NSW Police Department report, there are at least 140
graffiti gangs or "crews" with a membership of about 800 graffitists or
"writers" on police computers, but approximately 300 groups involving up to
3,500 youths from 12 to 18 years of age could be involved in the graffiti
subculture in New South Wales alone. In 1986 it was costing the NSW State Rail
Authority $5 million a year to clean graffiti off trains, and New South Wales
Transport Investigation Police tell of a gang of nine who caused $182,000 worth
of damage in two nights.

In Victoria, graffiti is costing the Met - Melbourne's urban rail system - about
$5 million annually. The cost of cleaning trains, structures and stations
belonging to the London Underground was 285,000 in 1985, rising to over
400,000 the following year.

Up till 1988 Australian Telecom was spending $18 million annually to repair
vandalism to its public telephones, and in Liverpool in the United Kingdom,
before an anti-vandalism campaign began to take effect, half that city's public
phones were out of commission at any given time (Merseyside Police 1988).

The school arson and vandalism bill for the New South Wales Government has
reached $14 million a year (Sun Herald 18 September 1988) and it is estimated
that arson in English schools has been costing between 25 and 30 million
annually.

But there is a cost in human terms, too. By 1988 six youths had been killed on
New South Wales railways while painting graffiti on carriages, and many are
injured every year (Wilson 1988). As many graffitists steal to buy spray paint,
the public also suffer. In a six-month period in 1988, the New South Wales
Police Graffiti Task Force laid 288 charges against graffitists - 115 of
malicious damage, 47 of stealing, 22 of assault, 13 of assault and robbery, and
17 of carrying offensive implements. And according to Transport Investigation
Branch police, graffitists who leave a crew are likely to be bashed for
defecting.

When schools are burned or vandalised, children suffer, and when public phones
are out of order, those who do not own phones - usually the underprivileged
members of the community - are further disadvantaged, particularly in
emergencies.

Vandalism is unacceptable on every level. It looks bad, costs money, reduces
the quality of life for those it affects, and often frightens people vulnerable
to crime.

Graffiti is not so clear-cut. Although it can be ugly, costly to remove and
dangerous for its practitioners, it has some benefits for some people: it can
look better than what it covers up; some slogans are funny; it is seen by some
as a form of community art; and politically-motivated graffitists like members
of BUGA UP (Billboard Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions) see themselves
fulfilling an important social function, a belief which is often upheld in
court.

The offenders

With the exception of Britain's soccer hooligans, those who indulge in vandalism
and graffiti are largely young people who under-achieve at school. Boredom,
alienation, family and community breakdown, lack of leisure opportunities and
youth unemployment have all been cited as causes.

The view of the New South Wales Transport Investigation Branch is that kids
become graffitists for fame, recognition and identification. The New South
Wales Police and Telecom's Special Vandalism Investigation Squad regards vandals
and graffitists as petty criminals (Monaghan 1986) or unsupervised larrikins,
but this is disputed by many talented graffitists, the authors of books on
"subway art" and collectors of graffiti.

Graffiti got a very bad press in Sydney press in September 1988, when a young
woman was allegedly abducted from a railway station and murdered by a group of
young men and women who had associations with graffiti gangs. Graffitists and
their sympathisers fought back, and stories portraying graffitists as, if not
quite the kid next door, at least frustrated artists, began to appear in the
media.

Former bombers turned "piece" painters (painting whole pictures legally rather
than illegal tags) at Sydney's Bondi Centre clearly view themselves as artists,
not criminals or vandals (Sun Herald 18 September 1988). As one 23-year-old
explained: "The graffiti crew are all about friendship and our shared interest
in art".

And at least one convicted graffitist formerly of "The Future Art Beat Four"
graffiti gang now designs covers for record companies (Sydney Morning Herald 15
September 1988). He also gets permission from builders to paint on their
hoardings. Not only is it legal and more artistically fulfilling than writing
tags on trains, it also commands a much wider audience.

"Graffiti has been around since man lived in caves," he said. "The graffiti we
see now are the purest form of the art because they are something spontaneous,
and outside the structured art gallery system."

He went on to explain the motivating force behind graffiti, especially tags -
"They spring from a fundamental urge to be recognised."

The culture

Graffitists have a pecking order, and to qualify as a serious practitioner (a
"writer") rather than an amateur (a "toy"), a youth has to spray his initials
("tag") at least 1,000 times on trains. If the train "runs" with the tag still
on it, this gives the writer more recognition among his peers, and one of a
writer's great triumphs is to be photographed beside his handiwork before the
railway maintenance workers clean it off.

The Transport police say graffiti crew communications networks are so effective
that a train painted at 3 a.m. in a depot will have an audience of admirers with
cameras lining the tracks when it "runs" on its first trip of the day. Writers
also gain status by being arrested and can become heroes if they get off the
charges.

Punishment seems to depend on whether the magistrate perceives the writer as a
kid acting on impulse or a hardened gang member with a long record. Some
writers have been sentenced to 12 months in an institution; others receive only
100 hours of community service.

The graffiti subculture seems to be highly developed, with secret signals,
symbols and handshakes and cult books. There are reports of information
exchanges, crew summit meetings, extensive interstate and even international
connections, and a monthly periodical called Hip Hop.

The graffiti movement has even adopted its own logo from the Volkswagon car logo
- an intertwined "VW". To crew members this stands for "Vandals Wanted", and
like other important graffiti paraphernalia, must be stolen. Some graffitists
with a taste for publicity have even had Vandals Wanted business cards printed,
complete with the VW logo.

Graffitists have developed a fairly lofty "philosophy", first made public in
Subway Art, a glossy illustrated "bible" for writers compiled from research on
three continents by Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfont (1984). The follow up
Spraycan Art by Chalfont and James Prigoff in 1987 is a full-colour how-to book
with 244 illustrations of graffiti and photos of famous writers, along with
romantic statements of the "live fast and die young" variety.

The philosophical stance, designs and operational tips in these books have been
adopted by local graffitist, as has the graffitists' special slang. Some
examples follow:

Bite

Copy other graffitist's style

Bomb

Spray graffiti on the outside of a moving train

Buff

Erase graffiti

Cap

Spray paint nozzle

Crew

Graffiti gang

Def

Good (derives from death)

Fade

Blend colours

Kill

Bomb excessively

King

Best with the most

Tag

Graffitist's three-letter identification sign

Toy

Inexperienced or new writer

Writer

Graffitist

Tags are the initials of graffiti crew names, for example,

ATK

All Time Kills

CC

Crime city

FSK

Fucking Psycho Kids

JFA

Just Fucking Around

LSD

Let Sydney Die, or Live Sex Darling

OSB

One Step Beyond

RSL

Resist Sydney's law

Some of these tags are simply self-aggrandising, but others point to a dangerous
degree of alienation from their city, their elders, and their entire environment
on the part of teenage graffitists.

Transport Police say the graffiti subculture is highly democratic, without
discrimination against particular groups, and apparently crosses class lines.
Only one discriminatory group was known of, a black crew which allows whites in
only to steal for black members.

Their motives

To counter the common notion that vandalism is senseless behaviour with no
motivation, criminologists have suggested a list of possible motivations (Canter
1984):

revenge

anger

boredom

acquisition

exploration

aesthetic experience

existential exploration

They see an act of vandalism as very complex behaviour which might be the result
of a number of different motivations.

Rennie Ellis, an Australian graffiti collector, regards graffiti as "...the
result of someone's urge to say something, to comment, inform, entertain,
persuade, offend or simply to confirm his or her own existence here on earth"
(Ellis 1985).

For the most part, however, Australian spray painters, with the notable
exception of BUGA UP, are not political: they don't leave slogans, just their
calling card in the form of a nickname. And they prefer to steal the paint as
part of the thrill.

Police psychologists say there are three sorts of vandals, each group with
different motives. Phone busters are thieves; school burners and breakers are
lashing out at authority; spray paint kids are showoffs, and seat slashers are
less-eloquent showoffs.

The current polarisation of the debate about graffitists into dangerous
criminals versus high-spirited kids with a love of public art may be preventing
a serious examination of graffiti as a symptom of extensive alienation,
hostility and social malaise on the part of growing numbers of youngsters.

Children have a tendency to stick together against the adult world, but most of
them grow out of it and take their places in adult society. Kids who join
graffiti gangs and become absorbed into the graffiti subculture may tend to stay
outside normal society. At best this will cut them off from many of the
benefits of participation in their community; at worst, it could lock them into
a lifetime of crime.

Local graffiti gangs have tended to follow overseas trends - in rhetoric,
artistic styles, symbolism - and the danger must be acknowledged that they will
follow the lead of graffiti gangs in Los Angeles and New York who moved into
drug dealing with all the violence it entails.

Types of vandalism

In their investigation into graffiti and vandalism for the New South Wales State
Rail Authority (1986), Paul Wilson and Patricia Healy used the following
categorisation of vandalism, adapted from Cohen (1972):

Tactical Vandalism - damage done as a conscious tactic to achieve another end.

Ideological vandalism - damage done to further a cause or communicate a
message, for example slogans on buildings.

Vindictive vandalism - damage done to get revenge, for example breaking school
windows because of perceived unfairness by teachers.

Play vandalism - damage inflicted incidentally or deliberately as part of a
game or competition, for example seeing who can break the most windows.

Malicious vandalism - damage as an expression of rage or frustration, for
example scratching the paintwork on expensive cars.

Innocuous vandalism - damage done to property defined by youth as unimportant
or of no value, for example slashing railway seats.

Wilson concluded that, though the motivation involved in tactical, ideological
and vindictive vandalism is fairly obvious, the motivations for play, malicious
and innocuous vandalism - most common to railway damage - are less obvious, and
unfortunately, quite widespread.

The crucial factors

British researcher Sheena Wilson (1979) points out that it is often difficult to
distinguish intentional forms of damage from wear and tear, indifference,
neglect and thoughtlessness in public housing estates. Vandalism, it seems, is
part of a spectrum of behaviour which begins with very common forms of
carelessness such as dropping litter, and continues through a wide range of
rough handling - bumping prams into glass swing doors, taking short cuts through
newly planted flower beds, for example - to the stage where damage is
deliberate: glass broken by airgun pellets, smashed fittings, and dismantled
fire-hoses.

Wilson concludes that it came down to people's lack of a feeling of ownership -
and therefore lack of responsibility - for the welfare of public parts of an
estate. One solution would be instilling this sense of ownership.

Wilson suggested a style of management which treats tenants as customers buying
a service, rather than as welfare supplicants. It would include a new attitude
to everyday transactions such as reporting repairs, rent queries and applying
for transfers; a more relaxed atmosphere at the local housing office; an open
and friendly manner on the part of housing officers, and less reliance on curt,
computer-printed communications.

The key to controlling vandalism and graffiti in public housing would seem to
lie in a recognition of its special characteristics.

It is "public", and does not therefore encourage a sense of "ownership" among
its tenants.

It is high-density living with the accompanying frictions.

Maintenance is often slow and inefficient.

Buildings and interiors are not designed with graffiti and vandalism
prevention in mind.

There is often a high percentage of children and the inevitable "problem
families".

Public housing is often socially stigmatised, too big to manage effectively,
and managed by bureaucrats.

What emerges from the British and Australian research and case studies is that
there is a need for the following.

Humane, consultative management of public housing, partly as a desirable
social goal in itself, but also to help instil a sense of ownership and pride in
public housing tenants.

Ongoing communications between the architects and designers who build the
accommodation and the maintenance staff who look after it and can therefore feed
back vital information about design weaknesses

Special arrangements for children so their normal play does not turn into
vandalism.

Good maintenance so that vandalised property and a general air of neglect does
not encourage more destruction.

Fundamental changes in the organisation and training of housing management might
be needed if this new approach is to be implemented successfully.

Ms Wendy Sarkissian, who carried out a study for the then New South Wales
Housing Commission on security through environmental design (1984), recommended
three major strategies for minimising vandalism in public housing.

Avoid a high density of children.

Provide adequate facilities for youth to give them something to do.

Make vandalism more difficult by using vandal-proof materials wherever
possible.

Defensible space

Damage occurs most frequently where there is little or no surveillance -
garages, refuse chambers and lifts, for example. To this extent, certain
building and estate layouts can be said to encourage vandalism. This idea has
been developed most fully by Oscar Newman (1972), who calls such no-man's-lands
"indefensible space".

Others postulate that ownership can be just as important as territory, and
Sheena Wilson, in her 1986 survey for the Home Office Research Unit, gave
Newman's theory only limited support. Her examination of 52 housing estates in
two London boroughs suggested that the design of buildings did not affect
overall levels of vandalism. Tower blocks, in particular, she found, were not
more susceptible to vandalism than other types of buildings.

Building design

Wilson's survey did find, however, that different sorts of buildings encouraged
different types of vandalism.

For example, in large buildings where access routes were very public and people
could come and go unchallenged, communal areas were heavily vandalised. In
tower blocks, damage was concentrated round entries. One answer is to make
entrances less inviting to outsiders - as an extreme measure, entryphones might
be installed at the entrance to tower blocks.

According to the 1977 Lambeth Inner Area Study, the most vulnerable access ways
are those linking flats in deck access and continuous gallery-type buildings.
Everybody uses these, but no-one is responsible for them. Here the type of
building is undeniably responsible for whole tracts of indefensible space. In
addition, entrances and staircases that are isolated and out of sight - for
example fire stairs - become "vandal temptation zones".

Scale

Scale has an important bearing on the amount of vandalism an estate suffers.
The Lambeth study found that a factor common to the least vandalised estates was
small-scale, well-maintained green space where the common areas appeared to
belong to the residents rather than everyone and no-one. And alternatively,
spaces which were severed by short-cuts appeared to be heavily vandalised.

Child density

Wilson's 1986 survey of London estates showed quite clearly that child density
was a critical factor in determining degrees of vandalism. She found that all
types of buildings were likely to experience some vandalism problems once the
ratio of school-age children went above five to every 10 dwellings, or where the
overall number of children in a block exceeded 20.

As high-rises exacerbate the children problem, local authorities should house
families with children on or near the ground. Because a lot of vandalism is
caused by children's play, one form of prevention is providing public play and
leisure facilities. When siting such facilities, it is wise to heed research
showing that children tend to play near to home and do not use flat and
uninteresting playing fields.

In her study into preventing vandalism in New South Wales public housing
estates, Wendy Sarkissian (1984) made the following recommendations concerning
children.

Design becomes important where child density is high, the critical point being
when the ratio of adults to children is less than 3:1, and where densities are
more than 60 to 70 children per hectare.

As children will play everywhere, noisy activities, digging, sitting quietly,
etc. should be separated out to cause least disturbance to people in dwellings.

One way of preventing children taking risks on buildings etc. is to build
adventure play areas on site or nearby.

Children like to play on footpaths, so they should be designed to accommodate
this.

Leave part of the site undeveloped for natural play areas.

Playground equipment should be sturdy and good looking.

Supervised after-school and summer holidays play is needed.

To stop teenagers getting bored and vandalising, provide challenging, varied
and exciting activities for them, as well as informal gathering places and
indoor social places exclusively for young people.

The Lambeth study suggested that play areas be moved from one part of an estate
to another - as in crop rotation - to give the grass a chance to grow and share
the nuisance of living near a large playground among residents.

In some cases playground facilities are underused because children are not
encouraged to use them. The Exeter Police Crime Prevention Support Unit
increased the number of children using a playing field from 10 to 300 in a week
by turning up to organise games of football. They then persuaded schools to
open up their grounds in the evenings for children.

A major problem here is getting officials to bend the rules a little: often
purely administrative objections were raised by officials who wanted to save
themselves trouble and effort.

Projects which help reduce vandalism tend to have a strong creative element and
give participants a sense of ownership. For example, as soon as Halton local
authority in the UK organised mural painting by groups of adolescents, they
stopped defacing the walls (Wilson 1979).

Maintenance

Sarkissian (1984) came to regard vandalism as much a problem of maintenance,
overuse or neglect, as one of outright destruction, and recommended the
following.

Use hardy, easily-replaced materials.

Use standard sizes for easy replacement.

Prepare maintenance manuals for speedy repairs.

Insist on maintenance contracts for playground equipment so it was not out of
action for long.

Avoid removable materials such as paving bricks.

Make funds available for maintenance and for correcting design faults.

Sarkissian warned that designers need to steer a course between durability and
good looks because "hard architecture" discourages people from using
facilities.

As damage left unrepaired often encourages destruction, a good policy for
housing authorities is prompt repairs - particularly in the case of graffiti and
broken windows - combined with strong on-site management and an insistence on
responsible behaviour by adults and children.

The role of housing authorities

The approach of housing authorities to vandalism should be both diagnostic and
prognostic, said David White (1979). That is, on the level of materials and
fittings, authorities should look back, find out what has been damaged and
replace it with something stronger - a basic, self-defence, reactive, even
negative approach. The authorities must also look forward to, and avoid or
allow for future damage by, building in easy-to-maintain or replaceable
materials and fittings - a positive approach. Either of these approaches will
only work if linked to a system of management which constantly responds to
feedback from users and maintenance staff.

Working from local authority repair notes, the UK Building Research
Establishment (White 1979) found that the most frequently reported damage was to
glass - at foot level, and in entrances and access ways, particularly in
buildings which housed children. Damaged glazing, more than any other single
feature, makes a building look vandalised.

In the long term, such damage suggests that defensive rather than reactive
measures are needed: modifications to the design and layout of housing estates,
caretakers to provide supervision and a housing allocation policy which
distributes families with children more equable. But with the immediate needs
of the user in mind, the Building Research Authority's summary confined itself
to commonsense precautions and listed finishes, materials and design features
that work. According to White, the first step a housing authority needs to take
is collating and analysing its own housing repair notes and devising from them a
preventive design guide for architects.

The Consortium for Method Building, a grouping of seven local authorities in the
UK has drawn up a checklist of likely damage and the remedies or precautions
required (Sykes 1979). The key instruction, in almost all areas, is to aim at
robust construction.

The Consortium's working party felt that the likelihood of vandalism was
broadly affected by two factors:

the general building design - its siting, the relationship and adequacy of
play space and circulation spaces, its robustness in areas of high use and risk
of attack, the relationship of its parts and the overall atmosphere created, and

design detail and the choice of materials and fittings.

Neglect is infectious, and accidental damage which is left unrepaired encourages
further damage. Areas of "low esteem" are particularly vulnerable. Anything
temporary, slipshod or over-used, anything indeed which suggests that the
housing authority is indifferent to the well-being of its tenants will invite
casual ill-treatment.

The critical need then is to reduce the opportunities for casual vandalism.
This means designing to prevent building failures, which the Greater London
Council has found to be the commonest triggers for vandalism. Tough detailing
is needed to prevent damage to the copings ends and exposed edges of brick walls
as a minor initial failure can encourage a major collapse. And when doors fail
in public areas, they positively invite vandalism.

NACRO projects in the United Kingdom

The work of the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders
(NACRO) on problem estates flowed out of a meeting on crime and architecture.

Its first project began in 1976 on a heavily vandalised and unpopular estate in
Widnes. A Crime Prevention Unit was established in 1979 and a Safe
Neighbourhoods Unit in 1980. By 1985 the latter had worked on 19 estates in
five inner London boroughs. Its aims were to confront vandalism and more minor
crime by involving the residents on demoralised estates in planning improvements
in such a way they would feel inclined to maintain and protect them (Rock 1988).

NACRO saw the victimisation and decay of problem estates arising from lack of
pride, co-operation, power and cohesion, and the remedy in a restoration of
structure and purpose.

Estate management programs were co-ordinated in liaison with different agencies
and with tenant participation; tenants' organisations were established and
strengthened; consultations were held with tenants, tenants' associations and
local authorities; councils and tenants were assisted in planning and
implementing the localisation of housing services to an estate or neighbourhood
level; attempts were made to improve and develop policing, and facilities were
provided for the young.

NACRO's Widnes project was reported to have brought about an appreciable
decline in crime. Eighteen percent of a sample of households on the estate
claimed to have suffered a break-in in 1976; by 1979, the comparable figure was
11 per cent. There was also a major decrease in the amount of damage noticed by
residents.

The consensus was that crime and vandalism on the estate had abated, although by
no means disappeared. There were fewer signs of graffiti and malicious damage
around the estate, and on the whole less evidence of nuisance to residents (Rock
1986).

Cunningham Road Estate - population 1,600, half aged under 17 - had serious
crime and vandalism problems in 1975, when NACRO and SCPR (Social and Community
Planning Research) began their joint project.

The estate comprised 250 houses built around 1950 and about 200 new houses and
flats. Houses were mostly two-storey with three or four bedrooms and front and
rear gardens.

When the program started, some of the old houses were boarded up, others had
broken windows. Gardens were untended; fences were a jumble of corrugated iron,
wire and old boards. Shops were barricaded with steel shutters and daubed with
graffiti. Streets and pavements were in poor condition. Vandalism was rife -
broken glass, graffiti, smashed brickwork and litter. Even the new part of the
estate was damaged, with vandalised playgrounds and broken glass.

The tenants were demoralised, apathetic, and hostile to the council and police.
Police did not bother to do anything about crime on the estate, council dumped
problem families on the residents, and they were angered by petty restrictions
such as not being able to paint their front doors.

NACRO's approach was influenced by the work of Oscar Newman (1972), particularly
his notions about the positive effects of a sense of control and ownership on
crime and vandalism. To this, the program team added extensive consultation
with tenants to get their views and co-operation on measures to be carried out
to fight crime.

Social and Community Planning Research people began by distributing a
questionnaire survey to most households. This provided them with reliable
statistics, informed the tenants about the scheme, and set up invaluable
personal contacts between the researchers and the local people.

NACRO wanted tenants to analyse the problem, and sought the views of a wide
cross-section of the community, not just the most vocal. They invited
randomly-selected tenants - adults and children - to a small, group discussion
of about eight people, paid them to participate, and brought them back three
times over a couple of months.

These group meetings elicited residents' views, gave everybody a chance to
speak, and helped people develop a sense of community. The meetings exposed the
low morale of the residents, who felt helpless to change things for the better,
and the gap in understanding between the tenants and the council. Consequently
the process also raised the consciousness of council workers.

The major problems aired by the Cunningham Road residents were anxiety about
security, dissatisfaction with the council's record on repairs and maintenance,
and disturbance and destruction caused by young people.

An analysis showed that the problems stemmed from poor planning and design
coupled with poor management. Children's playgrounds were an example of poor
planning and design. They had been designed for small children and sited close
to dwellings, but because they were the only well-lit, dry areas with seating,
teenagers congregated there and bullied children, broke equipment, and kept
families awake at night with rowdy behaviour.

When consulted, the teenagers decided to build a hut for themselves. They also
became involved in the process of cleaning up the estate by painting murals and
planting trees.

Problems with garden fences arose from both poor planning and bad management.
Tenants from the old part of the estate had to provide their own; some were
unsightly, and others inadequate to keep out dogs and children. In addition,
council had torn up front fences - which had been a hotchpotch of hedges and
fencing - and replaced them with low walls which did not keep out children, dogs
nor litter.

The scheme succeeded in helping tenants overcome their feelings of helplessness
and apathy. The meetings brought people together for the first time, a sense of
community developed, and tenants were able to negotiate with council on an equal
footing.

Tenants set up a Residents' Association which organised leisure activities on
the estate and lobbied council about repairs. An adventure playground opened
near the estate and a play leader was appointed and organised mothers to help.
Council let people paint their front doors, plant hedges and put fences on top
of the dwarf walls. Pavements and street lights were repaired, and some
outstanding repairs were done. A beat policeman was assigned to the estate at
the request of tenants.

After initial problems with vandalism, the adventure playground began to succeed
and the Residents' Association thrived. The council kept up repairs and
maintenance, and a long-planned Youth and Community Centre opened nearby.

The estate no longer gives the impression of being under siege. There is little
visible sign of litter, broken glass or other breakage, and no new graffiti.
Almost all the trees planted at the beginning are still standing. Teenagers are
seldom a nuisance now; the beat policeman reports a dramatic decrease in crime;
and the few families which had been terrorising the neighbourhood appear to have
quietened down.

Because of the residents' increased confidence and sense of community, relations
with the police and council improved; and although violence and vandalism did
not disappear, they did decrease.

Very little money was spent on the Cunningham Road project that was not already
allocated to the area, although some was transferred from other budgets so small
repairs could be done quickly. council officers gave a great deal of time to
the tenants, and it was the relationships which grew out of this contact that
raised the tenants' morale.

What began as an anti-vandalism project had implications far beyond its original
terms of reference. It demonstrated: that tenants' conditions could be greatly
improved without massive capital spending; the importance and difficulty of
dialogue between tenants and housing authorities; the importance of morale to
the welfare of the estate and the way this is affected by communications between
tenants and housing authorities; and the latent possibilities for self-help
among tenants (Blaber 1979).

And finally, largely as a result of this experience, Halton council adopted a
package of changes emphasising the importance of improving estate management.

Priority Estates Project (PEP)

The UK Department of Environment's Priority Estates Project also recommended
social reconstruction to fight demoralisation on problem estates. It was not
concerned expressly with crime and the criminal justice system, but with crime
and vandalism as indirect policy issues arising out of their effect on the
environment.

The Priority Estates Project (PEP) was launched in 1979 to improve housing
management and decrease the number of vacant properties on difficult-to-let
estates. The aim was to move management and maintenance staff from Town Hall
and put them on the housing estates where they could work closely with
residents.

A PEP begun on the Penrhys Estate in the Rhonnda in Wales in 1984 is:

involving tenants in consultations and programs;

working with the local authority and other relevant agencies;

initiating major repairs;

improving lighting;

treating walls with anti-graffiti paint;

reducing the number of dwellings per block;

localising lettings and repairs;

intensifying beat policing and instituting night police patrols.

The Priority Estates Project (PEP) was not directed specifically at crime, but
it nonetheless seems to have had a very real impact on it (Rock 1986). One of
the consultants involved asserted that the burglary rate was decreasing on all
but one of the Project's estates. The most conspicuous change was observed on
the Broadwater Farm Estate in Haringey, which had been called a "nightmare
estate"; between 1982 and 1984 the burglary rate dropped by 62 per cent.

A quantifiable success story comes out of the Gibbshill Estate near Glasgow
(Burral 1979). Crime and vandalism were once so rife that shops windows were
bricked up and the council considered demolishing the estate. Instead, with the
full involvement of the tenants' association and the police, council undertook a
3 million environmental improvement scheme.

Over 200 houses were knocked down to make way for amenities including sports
and recreation facilities, a community centre and a new shopping centre. The
police introduced foot patrols and a local business gave a hut to a youth club.

As a result, vandalism almost disappeared, and the number of crimes and offences
on the estate dropped by almost 40 per cent at time when the rate was rapidly
increasing elsewhere.

Design tips for vandal-proofing public housing

One method of discouraging graffiti is to apply approved "graffiti" in the
form of murals or mosaics where an undecorated surface might be tempting.

Where murals are unsuitable, avoid soft-textured wall finishes which can be
easily scratched, particularly if the surface colour contrasts with that of the
substrate.

Avoid light colours on walls.

If it is likely that a surface will have to be renewed, avoid materials that
are expensive to renew.

Vital structural elements should be carefully protected; this can be done by
cladding concrete with steel or a strong sheeting material provided that the
method of fastening does not lend itself to vandalism.

Soft mortar in brickwork can easily be scraped out, so joints should be
regularly inspected and deteriorated mortar mix raked out and replaced by a
good-quality mix of sand and cement.

Drain pipes should be cast iron rather than plastics or asbestos-cement below
the height of two metres. They should be built up with concrete so they cannot
be wrenched off the building, nor can the bracket fixings then be used as
footholds.

In areas where breakage of glass is mostly due to carelessness, or in
ground-floor windows, toughened glass can be used.

It is now possible to install vandal-proof lifts, or a vandal-resistant
push-button system for lifts.

Warnings that certain acts may evoke penalties might deter some vandalism.
Warning signs must be clear and unambiguous, and as many vandals are very young
or non-achievers, pictorial signs are the best.

Summary

Vandalism problems on many housing estates stem from poor planning and design
coupled with poor management. The following solutions have arisen from case
studies in Australia and the United Kingdom.

Fostering a sense of territoriality. Public housing estates where
architectural styles, tenant programs and management policies give tenants a
sense of "owning" their residences seem to be less vulnerable to vandalism than
huge impersonal estates where the tenants are alienated from the buildings and
the management.

Planners and architects can minimise vandalism and graffiti by designing
spaces which can be easily seen to belong to particular groups of people, which
can be watched and thus guarded by residents or passers-by, and to which access
is limited to those who have a legitimate right to be there.

Sensible management policies and practices. In public housing estates,
effective management involves developing a good working relationship with
tenants, good maintenance and quick repairs, sensible tenant allocation and fair
eviction policies, and an insistence on responsible behaviour by adults and
children.

Better buildings. Faulty design and inappropriate material selection and
specification result in building defects, which are widely regarded as one of
the major triggers of vandalism. Architects and builders must be aware of the
use to which buildings and fixtures will be put, making sure they are strong
enough to withstand everyday wear and tear, careless use and misuse.

Good maintenance and quick repairs. As much vandalism is caused by overuse or
neglect of property, and as damage seems to attract more vandalism,
well-maintained buildings and speedy repairs are essential.

Providing alternative activities. Estate management, police, parents or a
combination of these can help prevent vandalism by organising sporting, leisure
and entertainment programs for young children and teenagers on public housing
estates.

As a result of their 1986 investigation into the graffiti and vandalism problems
of the New South Wales State Railway Authority, Paul Wilson and Patricia Healy
concluded that more than increased surveillance and higher penalties were
needed.

From international evidence, they concluded that reducing graffiti and vandalism
would best be accomplished not only by increasing the risk of capture of
offenders, but also by diverting motivation by involving young people - and the
community as a whole - in creative schemes to improve the environment, and by
giving transportation systems a more human face.

Experience in a number of countries shows that preventing or minimising graffiti
and vandalism seems to depend on the right formula, or package, of measures -
police or railway police presence, electronic surveillance, quick and effective
clean-ups, education campaigns, restrictions on the weapons or tools used, and
programs and activities that prove more attractive to young people than bombing
trains or hanging around railway stations.

A less traditional response - and one that seems to be successful with some
graffitists at least - is mounting programs which take graffitists' artistic
aspirations seriously and offering them a legal outlet for their art. This is
the approach taken by the Bondi Youth Centre in Sydney and in Planned
Parenthood's New York program.

New South Wales, Australia

In a 1986 public opinion poll carried out for the New South Wales State Rail
Authority (SRA) by ANOP Research Services, 80 per cent of Sydneysiders surveyed
said they were worried about their personal safety on trains and were also
concerned about graffiti and vandalism. The SRA commissioned a study into the
problem from the Australian Institute of Criminology, and this was produced in
the same year as Graffiti and Vandalism by co-authors Paul Wilson and Patricia
Healy.

The Wilson/Healy recommendations

As a result of their investigation, Paul Wilson and Patricia Healy made the
following recommendations:

Fast repair of vandalism and graffiti removal by:

establishing realistic and practical time limits for quick removal and repair;

formation of mobile graffiti removal squads;

incorporating, as quickly as possible, vandalism and graffiti resistant
materials.

Community measures involving:

publicly differentiating vandalism and graffiti from violent crime;

using community murals and other forms of art on stations and in trains;

improving liaison between transportation departments and schools, local
communities and the media;

diverting motivation by providing challenges or programs to raise young
people's esteem through schools' parent/teacher associations;

improving, in as many ways as economically possible, the physical and social
environment of stations, carriages and public walkways.

Information systems which should:

introduce a comprehensive system for the collection, analysis and
dissemination of information on graffiti and vandalism.

Deterrent measures involving:

establishing professional and specialised security services to combat these
behaviours;

increasing visibility of staff on trains and improved patrol procedures;

establishing a Rail Watch (based on Neighbourhood Watch) for the staff and
public;

thorough investigation of the appropriateness of Community Service Orders for
offenders.

If the opinion poll were repeated today, it would almost certainly reveal an
escalation in the general anxiety level about safety in and around trains and
stations. The matter came to a head in New South Wales in September 1988, when
a series of violent incidents made the font pages of Sydney newspapers and
caught the attention of the nation.

For example, graffiti was allegedly the link between five teenagers charged with
abducting a Sydney woman from a railway station carpark at knifepoint and
killing her. Shortly after, a 14-year-old street girl was charged with the
murder of an old women who often slept in Sydney's Central Station women's
lavatory.

The Transport Investigation Branch (TIB) of the New South Wales Police
reportedly attributed 50 per cent of assaults on trains to youths (The Weekend
Australian 17-18 September 1988). A spokesman listed an average day's crimes at
Central as 10 bag snatches, a couple of assaults and a couple of sexual
activities in the toilets.

Figures for a typical month at Central Station showed 25 robberies between 6
a.m. and 5 p.m; four assaults, 24 thefts, one graffiti and eight "drugs and
behavioural" incidents between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m; between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m., 10
thefts, seven assaults, four drug and behavioural problems and one graffiti
incident; and nine assaults between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. A spokesman for the New
South Wales Police Graffiti Squad maintains most of the 2,000 to 5,000 gang
members carry weapons.

The 1988 Train Crime Offensive

The following are among the measures adopted by the New South Wales Government
to combat vandalism and graffiti on trains.

In February 1988, 250 members of the State Rail Authority's Railway Police
were transferred to the New South Wales Police Department as the Transport
Investigation Branch (TIB).

A number of these TIB officers were selected to staff a Graffiti Task Force,
which is part of the Police Department's Street Safety Program. Members of the
Task Force patrol vulnerable areas and places where graffitists are known to
congregate, identify graffitists by their tags and apprehend them, and respond
to information from the public.

The Graffiti Task Force's Tactical Intelligence Unit is endeavouring to
systematise information on known and suspected graffitists to make
identification and apprehension easier.

Bondi Youth Centre

This Government-funded youth centre is a home away from home for about 50
reformed graffiti artists, who have left their mark (legally) on the building's
colourful walls. The youths have stopped "bombing" in favour of doing "pieces",
or complete pictures.

The drop-in centre keeps young people entertained with activities, including a
graffiti course which teaches them art and allows them to test their talents at
legal venues donated by private or public contacts.

The centre's co-ordinator says it is "street kids" rather than the majority of
graffitists who are into drugs, violence or vandalism. He says the bad
publicity given graffiti gangs in the media will put the centre at risk, by
attracting younger children to graffiti for all the wrong reasons (Sun-Herald,
18 September 1988).

Vandalism and graffiti on the MET, Victoria

According to the Victorian Minister for Transport (28 June 1988), the annual
cost of combating graffiti and vandalism on the Met - Melbourne's urban rail
system - is about $5 million a year.

The Victorian Government has initiated the following measures to fight the
problem.

Video surveillance of railway stations, starting with the new station at
Frankston. Security cameras already operate at a number of stations. The
Government also intends to trial closed circuit television surveillance inside
trains.

The Transit Police numbers will be increased from 220 to 400 by June 1990.

Commuter Watch, the transport arm of Neighbourhood Watch has been set up. A
poster campaign at stations is also being mounted to encourage passengers to
report graffitists to the Transit Police on a special phone number.

A Graffiti Clean Up Gang has been formed.

Offenders on Community Service Orders will clean railway stations on weekends.

Advertising will be introduced on trains for a trial period to reduce the
amount of wall space available to graffitists and to help offset the cost of
eradicating graffiti.

In 1988 the Government doubled the number of train cleaners from 15 to 30 to
get graffiti-damaged trains repaired and back into service as quickly as
possible.

Bicycle lockers and "chain and lockguard" devices were installed at a number
of metropolitan stations in 1987, and a bicycle cages will be erected at others
to prevent theft.

Train guards are now required to move up and down carriages to be more visible
and to offer help where needed. They investigate unruly behaviour and carry
hand-held radios to summon assistance and report vandalism on trains or at
stations.

Sixty suburban stations are to be cleaned up.

The Met is to experiment with vandal-proof surfaces, fittings and finishes.

Security in stabling yards is to be improved, and the use of closed circuit
television will be investigated.

A Women and Transport Task Force has been established to advise the Minister
for Transport on public transport matters affecting women. The first stage was
a Women's Transport Needs Study.

The London Underground, the United Kingdom

An investigation by London Underground Limited (LUL) found that graffiti had
developed from a minor problem in 1984 into a serious one by 1986. Graffiti
styles had changed, too, apparently influenced by the popular American book
Subway Art.

In 1985 the cost of cleaning trains, structures and stations totalled 200,000
and this was expected to rise to 408,000 in 1986. Staff reductions on some
stations and the introduction of one-person-operated trains appeared to be
contributing factors. On two badly hit lines, Hammersmith and the Circle Line,
the worst damaged cars were those farthest from the train driver.

Preventive strategies

According to Paul Ekblom in a paper on preventing graffiti on the London
Undergrounds (1986), the challenge for authorities was to find ways of
responding to graffiti that do not:

increase the challenge or reward for offenders;

place the offenders in physical danger;

interfere with safe operations such as maintenance, cleaning, etc.;

cost too much;

require excessive manpower;

cause displacement to other places or to other anti-social activities.

Ekblom suggested the following approaches: (1) reducing or diverting the
motivation of the offender, (2) substantially reducing the risk of capture, (3)
rethinking penalties, (4) changing the composition or distribution of the paints
used, and target hardening on the trains and in the depots.

Ekblom suggested that the motivation of the offender can be reduced or
diverted by:

As well, offenders could be diverted from spray painting to another activity
which provided a similar challenge and raises self-esteem. This could be done
through schools or parent-teacher associations.

removing artwork quickly;

making sure surfaces ("canvases") are aesthetically unpleasing to the artists;

taking the glamour out of graffiti by reducing the challenge and preventing
publicity;

promoting public disapproval or ridicule of the activity, or

waiting for the craze to die down.

Authorities can attempt to reduce graffiti and vandalism by substantially
increasing the risk of capture. This could be achieved by improved surveillance
for example, through:
It could also be achieved by increasing security to prevent potential offenders
gaining access to London Underground's operations information.

closed circuit television combined with a fast response;

better lighting;

surveillance by staff or nearby residents;

real or simulated security patrols.

Ekblom suggested that, with regard to penalties, offenders should be required
to make cash reparations, rather than cleaning up their mess, as cleaning off
the graffiti could expose them to toxic chemicals or danger from live tracks or
trains.

An obvious situational crime prevention solution is to attack the tool - in
this case the paint spray. This could be done by asking manufacturers to:

As well, the paint supply could be reduced by requiring retailers to:
The targets - train depots, trains, carriage surfaces - could be hardened in
the following ways.

produce paints less likely to cling to unprepared surfaces;

provide information on the most effective solvents for their paints;

make cans less suitable for the narrow jet favoured by graffitists;

put whistles in the cans.

tighten up security on spray paint displays;

introduce codes of practice on sales of cans to children, perhaps taking the
restrictions placed on harmful glues as an example.

The target could be made more difficult to damage, and/or easier to repair by:

painting or impregnating surfaces;

using pop-out panels;

using wet surfaces.

Access to sites could be controlled by:

blocking or keeping under surveillance illegitimate entries

improving security at legitimate entrances.

The program

The following anti-graffiti strategies were recommended and adopted by a special
meeting of London Underground Limited (11 June 1986).

As stations are refurbished, vandal-proof - or at least easily-cleaned -
surfaces should be installed.

Graffiti can be painted over on stations, and a paint should be developed that
will cover graffiti on trains and resemble the metal surface.

Investigations into non-toxic cleaning solvents should be intensified: a
combined solvent and high pressure steam process seems promising.

The following recommendations were also considered to have merit, but because
they were significantly more expensive, were conditional on a detailed
cost-benefit analysis.

Extend closed-circuit television monitoring to cover some rolling stock depots
and more stations - this was favoured by the Police.

Increasing police manpower was considered but found too costly and inflexible.

Linishing (sanding down and polishing a bare metal surface) rolling stock
exteriors. (This weakens the body panels and shows up against other unaffected
panels, however.)

Painting rolling stock exteriors. This has proven effective on British Rail
trains. It is easier to clean and unremovable designs can be painted over.
Because of the expense, however, LUL saw this as a last resort.

Transit police, Houston, the United States

Different jurisdictions in the United States have responded to railway crime
differently - from employing traditional measures such as transport police,
through educational programs, to art programs for graffitists.

Between 1983 and 1986 vandalism dropped by 52 per cent, crime on buses by 60 per
cent, and crime on park and ride lots by 59 per cent. Crime incidents per
100,000 passengers fell from 12.3 to 5.0.

The Transit Authority takes crime prevention education and anti-vandalism
programs into primary and secondary schools and produces crime prevention
brochures for adults, available from all METRO Transit Centres.

Recently METRO Transit initiated a Lifesaver identification tag program for
children and a mobile crime prevention bus. A Transit on Watch program, which
will train drivers to report suspicious activities to the police, is also
planned.

New York Transit Authority Campaign, USA

According to a spokesman for "The We Care About New York", a non-profit, private
group dedicated to fighting graffiti and litter, 95 per cent of railway
carriages on the New York subway had been vandalised inside and out by the early
1980s, costing the City of New York some $42 million in cleaning bills. After
the campaign, 86 per cent of the city's railway cars have been made
graffiti-free (Sunday Telegraph 25 September 1988). As well, the number of
arrests for graffiti-vandalism had dropped from approximately 2,400 people in
1984 to 300 in 1987.

The anti-graffiti campaign initiated by the Transit Authority's new director,
David L. Gunn, in 1984 included greatly improved security measures, fast removal
of graffiti to deny vandals the pleasure of seeing their handiwork, and the
introduction of imaginative programs to provide graffitists with alternative
pursuits. New York State has also clamped down on the sale of spray paint cans,
preventing their sale to minors; and new city ordinances require store owners to
keep the sprays behind wire mesh or locked in racks to prevent theft -
graffitists' preferred method of obtaining their tools (Sunday Telegraph 25
September 1988).

According to New York Transit Police statistics (New York Times May 1989) the
environment in New York's subway system has improved dramatically in the past
four years. The percentage of subway cars with broken door panels has dropped
from 29 to 11, of defaced wall subway maps from 36 to 2, of interior graffiti
from 85 to 3 and broken or spray-painted windows from 62 to 1.

Although the Transit Authority's director said guard dogs on unused cars and the
new ordinances made it harder for minors to buy or steal spray paints, Gunn gave
most of the credit for the dramatic decrease in graffiti to the Authority's
policy of erasing graffiti - whether a tag or a mural running the length of a
train - within 24 hours.

Crime is another story. The number of crimes reported in February 1985 was
2,413, and 2,420 in February 1989, with the number of robberies increasing from
324 to 550. On the positive side, however, robbery arrests in the same two
months rose from 138 to 280.

Other cities in the United States have reportedly followed New York's example.

Planned Parenthood Program

Planned Parenthood of New York have launched a program in which offenders
receive art supplies and a chance to exhibit their work in return for a pledge
not to write graffiti. In 1987 nine former graffitists reportedly earned over
$2,000 for their art at an exhibition (Sunday Telegraph 25 September 1988).

The Guardian Angels, New York

In some cases, members of the public have taken action themselves to prevent
crime on public transport. For the past 10 years groups of young people called
the Guardian Angels have been patrolling New York's subway system trying to
prevent violence on trains. They carry no weapons, but wear khaki army
fatigues, black army boots, badge-clustered red berets and white tee-shirts with
the Angels insignia.

Angels are not permitted to drink alcohol or carry weapons.

Claiming that subway crime was out of control, Curtis Sliwa and 12 volunteers
began riding the New York subways during allegedly peak crime hours as "The
Magnificent Thirteen Subway Safety Patrol" in February 1979. Their purpose was
to deter crime by their presence and make citizen arrests when serious crimes
were observed.

The idea caught on and attracted large numbers of volunteers. The group was
formally organised, the now familiar uniform a tee-shirt and red beret was
adopted, and the name changed to the Guardian Angels. By 1981 the Angels were
claiming a membership of 1,000 throughout the United States, 700 of whom
operated within the five boroughs of New York City; and by 1985, membership was
estimated at 5,000 (Kenney 1986).

The Guardian Angels regard crime as a breakdown not in law enforcement, but in
citizen involvement, and offer themselves as examples of community
responsibility. They claim that, by 1982 they had interrupted crimes and made
arrests in over 258 instances, 136 of which involved suspects armed with guns or
knives. They also report numerous cases of finding missing children, helping
the elderly and injured, and even rescuing one police officer. Many see
preventing crime by their presence as their major contribution to law and order.

Studies have been carried out both to measure the effectiveness of the Guardian
Angels in reducing crime and fear of crime on subways, and to decide whether or
not they should be regarded as vigilantes.

To test the Guardian Angels' impact on crime in New York subways, Kenney and his
associates (1986) carried out a complex evaluation of their program. Among
their findings were the following.

Because crime rates turned out to be so low on the subway - accounting for
somewhat less than 2.7 per cent of the city's crime - and crime was so sporadic
in the survey area, the researchers could not reach any definite conclusion
about the Angels' impact on reducing crime.

Although the level of fear turned out to be much lower than expected - with
half the respondents only a little worried or not worried at all about subway
crime - 61 per cent of those surveyed felt that the presence of the Angels made
them feel safer, while 66 per cent believed the Angels could actually reduce
crime itself.

The Guardian Angels found their greatest support among those who felt most
threatened by night-time crime on the subways - women, especially Hispanic
women.

The evaluation team concluded that the Guardian Angels' role in law enforcement
was mixed, and that it was difficult to determine how strongly the public's
opinion about them were held. They speculated that the Angels' rhetoric about
subway crime might actually contribute to fear, and maintained that the
organisation's claim of reducing crime on the subways remains unproven but
doubtful. Finally, they echoed the concern of some commentators that the
Guardian Angels, like many active citizen action organisations before them,
might evolve into a socially destructive force.

On the positive side, an assessment of the Guardian Angels carried out by
Pennell, Curtis and Henderson for the US National Institute of Justice (1986)
found.

In some cities like Cleveland, Angels are quite visible performing both a
helping role and an order maintenance role as they assist people onto buses and
urge riders to stay behind the lines where the buses stop.

There are few organisations like the Guardian Angels that purposely recruit
multi-racial groups of young people to commit time and energy to community crime
prevention.

The Angels offer an alternative approach for citizen involvement in crime
prevention by providing positive role models for youth, bridging the gap between
older citizens and adolescents and reducing the fear of crime for certain
segments of the general citizenry.

The founder, Curtis Sliwa, possesses charismatic qualities that motivate young
minority youth to become positive role models by becoming involved in volunteer
crime prevention efforts. By tapping a previously unrecognised group of young
people, Sliwa offers what is perceived as a worthy mission. He "dares" the
Angels to "care" and combines the macho image with an orientation that supports
the value of helping others.

The most significant feature of the Guardian Angels may be that they represent
a group of young people generally seen as contributing to the crime problem
rather than to its solution.

The authors cite a study which contradicts the label of vigilantism often
attached to the Guardian Angels by the popular press and law enforcement
authorities. They speculated that the cool response of the police to the Angels
was based on both this perception of them as vigilantes and a fear that groups
would make tactical mistakes and abuse their power (although the authors found
few specific instances where Angels intervened inappropriately).

Pennell et al made the following recommendations designed to improve Guardian
Angels' approach to crime prevention and deterrence.

The Angels should adhere to their National Rules and Regulations, in terms of
minimum age, screening of applicants, standardised uniforms and improved record
keeping.

They should increase their interaction and co-ordination with other citizen
groups.

In each city, Angel Chapters should increase public awareness about their
objectives.

Training for members should be standardised.

To improve recruitment, the national leader should participate in local
recruitment drives on an ongoing basis.

The Guardian Angels should seek a rapprochement with police, community leaders
and decision makers in cities where there is not a clear understanding of
respective roles.

Prior to setting up new patrols in neighbourhoods, Guardian Angels should
first meet with community leaders to identify concerns and needs of the
citizenry and the types of groups in existence to address these problems.

Late in 1988 the group's founder, Curtis Sliwa, visited London to assess the
need for a British chapter of the organisation and returned with four followers
in January 1989, only to be held at Heathrow Airport and questioned by Special
Branch officers. The view of the U.K. Home Office was that the problem in
London is not as bad as that in New York, and vigilantes are not the answer
(Sydney Morning Herald, 27 January 1989).

Representatives of the Guardian Angels also visited Australia in 1989, but so
far no chapters of the organisation have been set up here.

Metro, Washington DC, the United States

During its first year of operation, the Metro mass transit system in Washington
- which has one of the highest crime rates in the United States - had only 46
crime incidents, and these were minor. The Metro's security plan included
employing crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) measures in the
planning and construction of the system, heavy staffing by uniformed transit
police during the first phase, and a sophisticated communications system linking
station attendants, a control centre and police and emergency services.

Metro architects designed the system to instil a sense of security in passengers
and to minimise opportunities for crime. To diminish people's fear of going
underground, they designed a spacious environment with excellent visibility.
Columns were kept to a minimum and attendants' booths were centrally located.
There are no long passageways; the route from the surface to the station is
relatively short. This means passengers do not lose their sense of orientation
and people are discouraged from hanging around.

The stations offer virtually no places where criminals can conceal themselves.
Indirect, soft lighting provides ample illumination while reducing glare and
eliminating shadows. And because public lavatories in subways attract criminal
activities, Metro opens them only on request.

Metro has also developed a sophisticated communications system connecting
station attendants and police to the operations control centre. Control centre,
in turn, can communicate directly with all local police, fire and rescue teams.
Closed circuit television cameras in blind spots can be monitored from
attendants' booths.

AC Transit Company Campaign, Oakland, California, the United States

As a response to serious problems of vandalism, harassment and drug activity on
the AC Transit Company in the early 1980s, one of the company's administrators
brought together Oakland gang leaders, service providers and businesses to
address the issue. A youth council of gang leaders was established, and private
sector support was enlisted to develop programs to provide jobs for young
adults. The result was that crime fell on the transit system and minority youth
were given a stake in their community (Pennell et al 1986).

A study by Sturman (1980) found that the location and extent of damage on a bus
was related to the amount of supervision the crew could give. Upper decks on
all types of buses suffered more damage than the lower decks, and the upper
decks on driver-only buses received nearly twice as much damage as upper decks
on buses with conductors.

Video cameras on buses in the United Kingdom

On Go-Ahead Northern's fleet of 700 buses in Tyne and Wear, in the north of
England, damage to one-person buses was costing about 250,000 per year.
Upper decks were the target of much of this damage, and school children were
held responsible. Types of damage included smashed windows; seats slashed or
thrown out; paint sprayed; egg, water bombs, fireworks, snowballs thrown;
vomiting and spiting. Fiddling with emergency doors was also a problem.

After consultation with staff, the company installed video cameras, which were
expected to be useful in cases of assault of drivers as well. Two video
cameras were fitted in a bus in a trial run to test their effectiveness.

From the one at the front of the top deck in an armoured glass mounting, it was
possible to supervise most of the top deck, particularly the rear seats. From a
second camera at the front of the lower deck above the driver's head, the area
around the driver was covered, but the rest of the lower deck was obscured by
the stairs. Video cassette recording equipment was concealed beneath the driver
a space formerly used to store bags and prams. As the recorder could only
record one camera at a time, the driver had to choose which camera to activate,
and when.

The video bus was tried out in November 1985 on a problem route, plagued by
rowdy school children by day and drunks at night. A number of incidents was
recorded in the first month and the offenders were followed up at school and at
home.

It was found that once an action had been taken against a child, that child did
not re-offend. It was claimed that after a few weeks and only a few follow-ups,
damage to the video bus virtually ceased and damage to other buses working from
that depot also decreased. The wide publicity the scheme attracted was felt to
contribute to its success.

As it cost about 3,000 to convert a bus to video and more to buy the playback
equipment at the depot, compared to 50 to fit a bus with dummy cameras, the
company decided to try out dummy cameras as well.

By February 1986 12 real video buses and 32 with dummy cameras - which were
fitted each time buses went in for an overhaul - were operating. The cost of
the entire program worked out at about 130,000, less than the cost of two
double-decker buses.

Bus Watch, United Kingdom

While the videos were being introduced, the Deputy Manager of the depot in
question introduced a program of visits to schools to encourage children to
treat buses and staff with more respect. Originally called "Our Bus Scheme",
the scheme was relaunched as "Bus Watch".

To illustrate the risks of vandalism, the scheme included a ride on the top deck
for school children, whose behaviour was then filmed and played back. Children
were also told that cameras existed on buses where they did not, and that the
driver's mirror concealed a camera.

Since 1986 the technology has improved; now pictures are clearer, a computer printout of frozen frames can be
obtained, and photos of offenders can be distributed.

The scheme was evaluated by Poyner and Webb in 1987. Because tapes were not
stored, the researchers were not able to use them, but conversations with those
who monitored the tapes made it quite clear that behaviour had significantly
improved on the buses.

Although there were no records of seat repairs before 1986, an examination of
records for the nine months following the introduction of the program showed a
dramatic reduction in damage to seat cushions. By May 1987 seat repairs at the
depot in question were a third of what they were one year earlier. In this
period, as well, the number of bus cleaners was reduced from six to two because
of a lack of work.

Poyner and Webb concluded that Go-Ahead Northern's measures to reduce vandalism
on their one-person, double-decker buses were very successful. The estimated
cost of installing live video systems in two buses, dummy cameras in three buses
and conducting an educational program in schools for one year was about 20,000,
were more than offset by savings in seat repairs over one year (17,000), and
savings on cleaners (about 30,000 a year).

Poyner and Webb concluded that the company's policy of following up offences in
the child's school and home was very effective, as was its publicity campaign.
They also noted that displacement of this vandalism had not occurred: in fact
the reverse was true. Damage and misbehaviour were not only reduced on the five
buses with live or dummy video cameras, but damage and cleaning problems
decreased throughout the whole fleet of 80 buses.

Summary

Vandalism and graffiti on public transport have been reduced by a variety of
strategies in several countries.

Quick repairs and fast removal of graffiti. As graffiti and vandalism seem to
attract imitators, trains and railway stations should be kept as clean and
attractive as possible - through the use of special graffiti squads, if
necessary.

The employment of crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED)
strategies in the planning and design stages of new railway stations and in the
renovation of existing stations.

The use of vandal-proof material wherever possible.

Schools, police and the community should mount education programs to
discourage children from becoming graffitists or vandals.

As people seem less likely to deface environments they find attractive, trains
and stations should be as aesthetically pleasing as possible.

Trains, depots and stations should be patrolled regularly by professional or
specialised security services transit police, or police.

The community should be encouraged to police their own transport systems by
joining groups such as Rail Watch.

If the problem is acute, electronic surveillance through closed circuit
television might prove cost effective.

Attacking the tools. Governments could ask private enterprise to develop
paints which are easy to remove and better solvents for other types of graffiti.

Programs could be mounted to enable graffitists to practice their art legally,
e.g. on hoardings of building developments, or on walls provided by councils for
mural painting.

Bored or alienated children and teenagers, particularly those living on public
housing estates, could be offered organised sporting, leisure and entertainment
programs to keep them off the streets.

Education Departments in a number of countries are facing enormous financial
losses through arson and vandalism in primary, secondary and tertiary education
institutions. In New South Wales, the cost of arson in public schools had
reached $100 million per year by 1987-88 and was increasing at 20 per cent
annually (Parliament of New South Wales Public Accounts Committee 1988).

In 1983 the New Zealand Government was reporting almost 12,000 annual incidents
of vandalism at a cost of $2.8 million in its education institutions (School
Damage File 1983). According to one commentator, the cost had increased five
fold by 1988 (Stoks 1988, personal communication). By the same year, the UK
Department on Education and Science was spending between 25 and 30 million on
vandalism in English schools (Crime Prevention News 1988).

The motivation for school vandalism and arson is not clear cut. Many experts
believe that much of what is called vandalism is not actually vandalism in the
legal sense of wilful damage, but results rather from unintended use; casual
misuse and designers' failure to anticipate the way in which products and
facilities are used; or failure to accommodate the users' requirements, so that
the users "adapt" the environment. Others believe that much vandalism is caused
by the failures of urban planners, policy makers, financial planners, designers,
architects, administrators and custodians of facilities, which provoke and make
possible a wide range of behaviour which is then misclassified as vandalism.

It emerged from the New South Wales Committee's Public Accounts (PAC)
investigation that some schools were partly to blame for arson attacks because
doors and windows were often left unlocked, computer paper was left lying
around, and security lights were not turned on. And the PAC was told that most
fires were lit to hide signs of forced entry.

Francis Stoks (1982) believes the most useful ways of addressing the problems of
vandalism and graffiti are based on sociological, psychological and ergonomic
approaches. He maintains that target hardening is the most expensive and
fruitless strategy. He also warns that every setting for vandalism should be
analysed separately as a complex system of influences, and that it is dangerous
to generalise on solutions for vandalism.

On the other hand, the United Kingdom's Department of Education and Science,
while acknowledging the role of instiling a sense of ownership and pride in
pupils, has taken a situational crime prevention approach to reducing crime,
arson and vandalism in schools in its Building Bulletin 67 - Crime Prevention in
Schools: Practical Guidance (1987).

Arson in New South Wales schools

The extent of arson in the New South Wales public sector prompted the
Government's Public Accounts Committee (PAC) to carry out an inquiry into the
problem in 1988. According to committee estimates, the cost of deliberately lit
and suspicious fires in New South Wales schools rose from almost $5 million in
1985-86 to $11 million in 1987-88, the latter comprising 27 per cent of all
arson in the state.

The incidence of arson and the level of damage have risen steadily in recent
years. In 1983-84, for example, 103 fires cost $4.2 million in building
restoration costs, while in 1987-88, 88 fires cost $10 million - $6 million of
the latter in one fire alone in Narooma High School.

These statistics do not adequately convey the true costs of arson in schools,
however. The estimated $600,000 cost of restoring burnt buildings at Pittwater
High School for example, does not take into account the cost of donated
equipment, student and teacher time spent in cleaning up and salvage, the cost
of demountables for temporary accommodation, or the disruption to students.

The incidence of fires in public schools was higher than that in Colleges of
Advanced Education, Universities and Colleges of Technical and Further
Education, and the committee speculated that this might be due to the greater
number of public schools, their accessibility, discipline problems, the age
composition of students, patterns of after-hours use and community attitudes.

The PAC found that, despite the size of the problem, the Education Department
did not have a comprehensive risk management system. It therefore endorsed
Treasury initiatives of February 1988 (published as Asset Appraisal Guidelines),
which directed the Department of Education to review standards, planning
procedures, and available surplus sites.

Electronic surveillance

The Education Department had, however, initiated a major schools electronic
security surveillance program. Although this was piloted as early as 1977, it
was not until the mid-1980s that rising public concern led the Government to
allocate a further $40 million to improving school security. By the end of
1988, 339 schools were connected to the Department's Electronic Surveillance
System, and connection is planned for all 969 metropolitan schools by 1992.

The system is designed to detect intruders once they are inside the building and
works on a matrix of infra-red detectors which are connected to a central base
station via modem and telephone lines. No alarm is given at the site, but the
system allows the base station to monitor the location of an intruder in the
building and report that position to security guards.

As a 1983 survey showed that 67 per cent of damage to schools was mainly
external, the system has some drawbacks. For example, it does not detect
intruders until they are inside the building and within the infra-red detection
range, an neither does it offer protection against damage such as graffiti on
the outside of school buildings. It provides only limited protection from fires
which are well under way before they affect the inside of the building, and it
cannot detect smoke alone.

In both New South Wales and Victoria, the incidence of damage at schools covered
by electronic surveillance has declined visible, but the PAC noted problems with
the surveillance system, particularly with switching it on. In some schools,
this was delegated to cleaners, teachers, community groups or others. Sometimes
people simply forgot to turn them on, and where community groups used the school
after hours, there could be a gap in protection between the end of the school
day and start of evening activities.

As well, alarm systems publicly reported as installed in some schools were not
fully operational, and two systems could not be operated on request - one due to
damage, the other because the headmaster did not know how to activate it.

Surveillance in country schools

Country schools are covered by a separate scheme in which the Department
installs return-to-base security alarm systems in high-risk areas within the
school, and installation, monitoring response and maintenance is carried out by
private contractors chosen by the Public Works Department. So far 119 out of
145 schools are in the program, and it is expected that the remainder will be
included in 1989.

Evaluation

The PAC's report is critical of the way in which the Education Department
handled the whole electronic surveillance systems program. In contrast with the
Victorian program, that in New South Wales was slow to start, more expensive and
less effective. Planned risk and financial management and strategy were
lacking, and co-ordination in the Department was poor. The committee
consequently recommended that an independent cost-effectiveness analysis of the
existing Schools' Electronic Surveillance System be conducted.

This analysis, conducted by Coopers and Lybrand Chartered Accountants, concluded
that the Education Department's electronic surveillance system could not deal
with well-organised vandalism, theft or arson (Sydney Morning Herald 6 October
1989). Although attacks on schools linked to the system were less costly than
attacks on totally unprotected systems, installing the system in all 2,300
primary and secondary schools in New South Wales was not economically
justifiable, given the high cost of installation and maintenance, the report
said.

Joint Police/Education School Community Awareness Security Program (South West
Area)

This program was piloted in 1988 to counter illegal entry, vandalism and arson
through increased community and school awareness. The program is staffed full
time by a team of four consultants - two police and two teachers - located at
Heckenberg in Sydney's south west.

Its main strategies are:

School Watch - passive patrols of schools at night and on weekends by members
of the community;

curriculum workshops - lessons on pride in the school;

crime prevention workshops, which teach young people ways of preventing crime;

student participation and clubs.

Mobile and static security guards

In 1987-88, $1.6 million was spent on mobile security patrols to protect
high-risk schools, and in special cases such as bomb threats, static or sit-in
guards were used. Security guards are also being used to back up electronic
surveillance systems. The New South Wales Education Department has begun to
employ, train and provide physical support to its own guards rather than using
contract operators. This will cost $4 million annually.

The Victorian Education Department maintains that dedicated security patrols -
patrols exclusively employed to secure departmental property in tandem with the
electronic surveillance system - have proven superior to private company area
security patrols.

The Victorian surveillance system

Unlike New South Wales, Victoria started systematically installing silent alarm
systems in a number of high-risk schools in 1977, and by 1983, about 600
metropolitan schools had been connected. As of 1988, 830 out of a total of
2,200 schools had alarms - 1,475 had systems, and 51,625 had detectors.

The PAC noted that "the capital cost of the New South Wales surveillance system
($4 million for metropolitan schools alone) appears to be significantly more
expensive than the Victorian system, with no demonstrable gain in performance"
(p. 51). In fact, the New South Wales system has had 30 per cent more false
alarms than the Victorian system.

In Victoria 45 per cent of entries or alarms identified lead to arrests, while
in New South Wales in 1988 some 241 offenders had been apprehended, and 50
charged. Some 87 per cent of those apprehended in New South Wales were under 18
years of age, with one as young as six.

In the cheaper Victorian program, the government uses eight companies to design
systems. These companies are small and work almost exclusively for the
Education Department. Tendering is done through school principals.

The School Damage File, New Zealand

Following considerable publicity about school vandalism in New Zealand, a
working party was set up in 1979 in the Department of Education and produced a
report in 1982 called "Measures to Combat Vandalism Against School Property" (NZ
Department of Education, 1982).

The working party identified school design, curriculum and social climate and
community factors as influences on vandalism in schools. It also recommended
that notes be prepared to help designers identify materials susceptible to
damage.

The Architectural Directorate of the Ministry of Works and Development was asked
to prepare these notes. They expanded the concept of notes to include many
other formats for use not just by designers, but also by property supervisors,
maintenance workers, administrators and school principals.

According to the Department's School Damage File, (1983) no conclusive pattern
of vandalism emerged across schools. Expenditure on vandalism damage repair
bore no consistent relationship to the size of the school population, or the
city or region in which the school was located.

The working party therefore concentrated on two strategies for reducing
vandalism - the social and "nuts and bolts" strategies. Statistics showed that
individual students were often responsible for multiple incidents, suggesting
that the problem was more social than physical. The Working Party concluded
that, when a small number of individuals are involved, it may be more efficient
to modify anti-social behaviour through distractions, incentives and discipline,
rather than through vandal proofing the physical environment.

Nevertheless, as it often provided opportunities or even provoked vandalism, the
physical environment was seen as a major contributing factor.

Working on the knowledge that all damage, however caused, ultimately influences
the way pupils use the school, and thus affects school vandalism (Pablant &
Baxter 1975), the team broadened the scope of the study from pure vandalism to
property damage in general.

The initial survey of 16 secondary schools seemed to show no apparent consistent
pattern in variables such as school size, average age of building, racial mix of
students, and the socio-economic status of the community in which the school was
located. In schools where vandalism and property damage seemed lowest, school
principals were also found to be motivated, enthusiastic and personally
interested in individual students.

It was obvious, too, that damage problems and solutions to property damage were
already well known to property supervisors and principals. While property
supervisors were damage-proofing items such as toilet paper dispensers,
principals were experimenting with management and social strategies such as
school personalisation through participatory landscaping, litter control
incentive schemes etc.

Francis Stoks (1985) characterises it as an "enormous, continuous and expensive
nationwide experiment in which all the participants - property supervisors,
school principals and staff, and to a lesser degree architects - were operating
in isolation". They were simply not sharing notes on common problems and
solutions. The issue then was not inadequate knowledge to combat the problem,
but how to co-ordinate this knowledge and circulate it more widely.

To determine the extent and nature of vandalism in schools and find out what
people thought caused it, the Education Department chose two highly-vandalised
schools, consulted with staff and students, examined the vandalism and took
photos. The result was an illustrated "cookbook" type of resource, with each
page dedicated to single "recipe" for describing one way of solving a school
vandalism problem It was reproduced in a loose-leaf format and was called The
School Vandals Reduction Bulletin.

A study was done of 16 more schools to collect more design data to include in
the schools' damage information system. Workshops were held in some of the
schools to discuss the project generally, to solicit support for the concept of
a school damage resource, and especially to test the bulletin information
gathering system on a range of different people. About 100 new bulletins were
produced in this way.

The bulletin's name was changed from Vandalism Bulletin to Damage Bulletin. All
the bulletins went into the new School Damage File. For examples of pages from
the New Zealand Deparmtent of Education Property Damage Bulletin see Appendix I.

Extreme target hardening strategies such as stripping off architectural features
and removing toilet cubicle doors were rejected as they often challenge vandals
into further wilful damage. Instead, using crime prevention through
environmental design theories - which maintain that those who identify
positively with the physical environment are less likely to damage it and might
even prevent others from doing so - the Working Party developed strategies
through the File to encourage student investment in the school environment, for
example by involving them in designing, building and caring for the school.
(Landscaping, adventure playgrounds, outdoor seating, display arts and mural
projects are examples of student participation projects consistently proven to
have a substantial effect on reducing vandalism.)

Where schools did not lend themselves to student participation and construction,
attention was paid to the state of repair and colour schemes of paintwork,
correct functioning of toilets, wash basins, drinking fountains etc. and many
other property maintenance strategies which have an indirect influence on
vandalism.

Evaluation

For reasons of cost, the School Damage File was not widely circulated, so the
effectiveness of the program was never measured. Another problem was that the
program required a central clearing house for receipt, editing and publishing
and distribution of the loose-leaf pages, and the clearing house function
disappeared under a massive government restructuring and privatisation program.

The DES Study, UK

The importance of carefully recording the type, time and circumstances of
offences as an aid to defining prevention strategies was also stressed by the UK
Department of Education and Science (DES) in its 1987 manual, Crime Prevention
in Schools: Practical Guidance.

With vandalism in English schools costing between 25 and 30 million a year,
the Department of Education and Science commissioned an investigation by
consultants who visited 11 schools and one polytechnic college in six local
education authorities. Of those, one or two were suffering severe and recurrent
damage, but the rest had succeeded in overcoming major problems of malicious
damage.

The review looked at various initiatives undertaken by local education
authorities to combat theft, arson and vandalism and found they fell into four
broad categories.

Security - alarms, locks and the like to prevent unauthorised access and
detect intruders and fires.

Management practices designed to keep premises in good repair and to encourage
support from pupils, staff and parents.

The report concluded that, though many authorities still regarded crime
prevention as a matter of introducing hardware, good housekeeping and good
management were likely to be the most cost-effective ways of preventing damage.
It also stressed the importance of incorporating effective design strategies
into new schools.

The project team evaluated various anti-vandalism/theft measures for their cost
effectiveness: the results are reproduced below.

A framework for prevention

The DES project team stressed the need to identify the level of risk and the
nature of risk in schools. To identify the level of risk, they said, the
following factors should be considered:

location;

nature of the site;

building construction and design;

day-to-day management of the building;

type of school;

history of damage incidents;

value of the building and its contents.

Example of locational factors adding to risk are:

public footpath through site;

public housing in vicinity;

no overlooking from neighbouring houses and roads;

area of high social stress and deprivation.

Some site factors adding to risk would be:

undulating topography and concealing shrubbery;

no fencing;

no lighting;

open;

many entrances to site and school buildings.

Some building factors adding to risk are:

combustible building material;

large areas of low-level glazing;

glazing near playing fields;

flat roofs and easy access to roofs;

hidden alcoves and entrances;

secluded loading bays;

louvred windows.

Examples of management factors adding to risk are:

unsecured building materials and contractors' equipment;

unsecured inflammable materials;

rubbish containers near backyards which can be overturned and set alight;

haphazard procedures for making deliveries;

poor directions for visitors;

no on-site knowledge of resetting and checking alarm systems;

poorly understood procedures for fire escapes and locking up;

unsecured ladders.

The team prescribed different preventive measures for preventing damage etc.
when the school is occupied, when it is unoccupied, and when it is in use
outside normal hours. For example:

The school when occupied

Types of damage and loss:

wear and tear;

accidental damage;

malicious vandalism;

theft.

The focus of prevention:

an ethos stressing pride in place;

preventive maintenance to reduce opportunities for damage and help keep down
replacement;

deterrence of casual intruders;

protection of equipment while in use.

The school when unoccupied

Types of damage or loss:

break-ins;

malicious attack;

arson and accidental fires;

The focus of prevention:

reduce opportunities for fire-raising;

prevent unauthorised access;

deter unauthorised access;

store and protect valuables.

The school in use outside normal hours

Times of risk:

fetes;

sports days;

parent days;

start of term;

end of term;

delivery days;

extra-curricular evening activities.

The focus of prevention:

warnings to people to keep their belongings in sight;

clear signs for visitors;

extra vigilance by staff;

safely locking up all school equipment;

provision of effective lockers;

locking of sensitive zones.

Finally, the team came up with this seven-point plan for preventing vandalism,
damage and arson in schools.

anticipate vulnerable areas;

design with use in mind;

design for robustness;

make positive use of casual surveillance;

securely store valuable items;

deter casual access and intrusion;

foil the determined intruder.

School Watch in the UK

Acting on recommendations of the Association of County Councils' 1987 working
party on arson, the education authority in Stockport launched a self-help scheme
aimed at drawing the problem to the attention of the whole community.

In consultation with police, fire services and the council's insurers, the
education authority initiated its Schoolwatch campaign, a two-pronged attack on
vandals - improving school security and acquainting the public with the real
costs of damage in Stockport's schools.

In Schoolwatch, neighbourhoods adopt their school buildings, much as
Neighbourhood Watch participants watch their neighbours' homes. Stockport's
campaign is believed to be the first of its kind in the UK.

School burglaries in London

Tim Hope (1986) surveyed 59 London schools, focusing on single-sex boys' and
co-educational secondary schools which had the highest rates of burglary among
Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) schools, and found that a quarter of the
schools accounted for over half the burglaries, while half the schools produced
no more than a tenth of the total number of burglaries.

The survey provided information on the characteristics of burglary, the area
where the schools were located, the design of school buildings, and certain
aspects of their management. Using site plans, the authors came up with a
formula for school design types. At the low end of the design spectrum were
small, compact schools mostly built before 1920. Their sites were small and
restricted and had no grass, trees or shrubs. They were brick, with small
window areas. The authors called them small, old and compact schools - SOC
schools for short.

At the other end of the spectrum were large, post-1945 remodelled schools with
sprawling buildings set in extensive grounds which were often grassed and
landscaped. Buildings varied substantially in height and often had lots of
windows. These were called LMS, or large, modern and sprawling schools.

Two facts emerged: SOC schools had significantly fewer burglaries than other
schools; as schools more closely resembled the LMS design tendency, differences
in burglary rates became much more variable.

The survey found that: neither the areas in which schools were situated nor the
characteristics of their pupils accounted for differences in burglary rates,
though these factors increased the probability of burglary when combined with
design factors; and differences in design rather than the higher number of
pupils in LMS schools seemed to account for higher burglary rates.

It seemed, therefore, that the little old schools were not attractive to
burglars, perhaps because they provided fewer opportunities for burglary.
Broadly speaking, opportunities for burgling schools fall into three types -
access, degree of surveillance, and the availability of property.

The SOC schools offered fewer opportunities to burglars for the following
reasons.

They were less accessible, with their high, brick perimeters, heavy wooden
sash windows with grilles, strong external roofs and difficulty in getting onto
the roof.

Surveillance was usually better because they were built in densely populated
areas rather than in the suburbs. They were usually close to roads so their
perimeters were well lit. Their smallness meant neighbours and resident
caretakers could see most of their exteriors.

Being small, and often split up, these schools had less equipment to steal.

LMS schools, on the other hand, were located in the suburbs away from main
roads; their size meant more access points for burglars and less chance of
being seen once inside; and with more pupils and multi-purpose and evening use,
these schools were more likely to have valuable equipment.

The authors concluded that school design significantly influences the burglary
rate, and raised three possibilities for prevention - building different sorts
of schools, changing educational policies, or trying to patch up the design
faults in existing schools.

Being realistic, they opted for piecemeal environmental improvements to the
schools that most needed it - in the London case, the large, modern and
sprawling schools. They recommended three major improvements:

additional night-time surveillance at the most vulnerable schools;

improved lighting at LMS schools to enhance surveillance and scare off
intruders;

improved crime prevention management, for example tighter security on entries
already used by thieves, better co-ordination where fire regulations and
security measures conflicted, and more sensible security and storage measures
for audio-visual equipment.

The authors warned that the two major types of crime in schools - nuisance
burglaries usually done by young adolescents on the one hand, and professional
burglaries or malicious vandalism on the other - pose different problems for
school authorities. A prevention strategy focusing on greater security for
school equipment using alarms, safes etc. might prevent professional burglary,
but might be ineffective against nuisance burglaries. A strategy concentrating
on making it more difficult to break into schools - particularly LMS schools -
would probably prevent both types of burglary, but would be much more difficult
and costly to achieve. They concluded that preventing burglary in schools
essentially becomes a matter of choice between costs and benefits.

Design tips for vandal-proofing schools

The following design tips come from the Greater London Council Architects'
department's Security Design Guide (White 1979). They can be used in any public
building.

Doors and windows

Hinges which face out and are illuminated should be fixed so that pins cannot
be removed from the outside of the building.

All vulnerable windows (on the ground floor, for example) should have adequate
locks.

Generally, metal sash or centre-pivoted windows are more secure. Louvred
windows are extremely vulnerable and difficult to secure and should be avoided,
as should horizontal sliding windows unless they are fitted with adequate
fasteners. In general, all windows and fanlights should be fitted with some
sort of mechanical restraint which limits openings to a maximum of 127 mm.

Doors should be solidly built, with solid cores if possible. If glazed vision
panels are used in doors to improve surveillance, they should be kept to a
minimum size.

Doors to high-security stores should be lined on the outside with sheet metal
and fitted with good quality five-lever locks. Cheaper locks will suffice on
classrooms or rooms without a specific security risk. Most doors in school
buildings should be the same standard as fire doors.

Adequate and properly-installed stops or buffers will prevent much accidental
damage to doors. To prevent damage to lightweight partitions from continually
slamming doors, install storey-height door frames, securely fixed to floor and
structural ceiling. Knobs are preferable to level handles.

Lavatories

Lavatories are focal points for vandalism, so their design requires an interplay
of management, planning and design decisions. It is possible to design
vandal-resistant lavatories.

Lavatories should be centrally located and staffed by a supervisor who should
also be responsible for cleaning.

Their floors should be designed to cope with flooding, by falling to gullies
or channels.

Cisterns should be secured in a locked service duct with can be reached from
outside the lavatory, though the general provision of concealed plumbing may be
too expensive.

Spray taps dispensing blended water rather than plugs in wash basins soon
repay the higher original outlay.

Building design

The GLC's approach inside buildings is to concentrate on the detailing of three
or four key areas to reduce opportunities for vandalism. Where supervision is
good - for example where the sides of buildings are overlooked by the
schoolkeeper's house - break-ins are rare.

Schoolkeeper's or caretaker's house should be sited to give supervision of
main entrances and as much of the building as possible.

The school building should also relate to the community, so that neighbours
can supervise by overlooking the schoolkeeper's entrances.

The very shape of buildings is critical to their degree of security,
particularly in single-storey buildings.

Concealed inner courts are particularly vulnerable and need a high degree of
security in detailing doors and windows.

Detailing can aid break-ins - for example the stepping of flat roofs and
rooflights can act as a ladder, and deep recesses and reveals can act as a
shield.

Open-plan designs used in recent buildings make surveillance by police and
public much easier.

Summary

A United Kingdom study concluded that school design significantly influences the
burglary rate and raised three possibilities for prevention - building different
sorts of schools, changing education policies, or trying to patch up design
faults in existing schools. Essentially, they said, it came down to a
comparison of costs and benefits. They opted for additional night-time
surveillance on the most vulnerable schools, improved lighting and improved
crime prevention management such as tighter security on entries already used by
thieves, better co-ordination between fire and security regulations, and better
security and storage measures for valuable school equipment.

Other measures used in schools in the UK, Australia and New Zealand for reducing
school burglary, vandalism and arson include:

School Watch programs, in which the local community are asked to take
responsibility for surveillance.

A centralised information system on vandalism problems and solutions - for
example the New Zealand School Damage File - to share knowledge quickly among
schools.

All that is required in some cases is commonsense and a heightened sense of
responsibility among staff and pupils, so they lock up valuables, lock doors and
remember to turn on alarms.

The Australian Government Working Party

Telephone vandalism in Australia was perceived to be such a serious problem
that, early in 1988, the Police Ministers' Council meeting in Hobart called for
the establishment of a Working Party to develop a coordinated national approach.
This Working Party began meeting in March 1988, and comprised representations
of the New South Wales and Victorian Police, Telephone and the Australian
Institute of Criminology (namely, the authors of this report).

Telecom advised the Working Party that theft from public telephones was costing
them $18 million annually, and that, in Queensland alone, incidents had
increased 400 per cent in less than a year.

Other Telecom statistics reveal:

Telecom lost $4 million through theft in 1986/87 and replaced 3,000 coin tins.

In 1987 in Victoria, Telecom had to fix 150 phones in one district in a two to
three week period.

Vandalism/robbery was running at 6,000 incidents per month in New South Wales.

29 per cent of offences were drug related and one per cent alcohol related.

The main offenders were juveniles - 70 per cent in New South Wales - who often
vandalised a phone for the $7 or $8 in the coin chute. Most coin box thefts -
which can net a criminal up to $200 - were done by drug users, with offenders
using anything from screwdrivers to acetylene torches.

Telecom reported that comprehensive national figures on vandalism have not been
available to date because, although all thefts were reported to police, all
cases of vandalism and malicious damage were not. As a result of a Working
Party recommendation, Telecom has reviewed its statistics keeping and reporting
methods.

Various initiatives arose out of the deliberations of the Working Party.

Telecom guaranteed to provide speakers on telephone vandalism prevention to
Neighbourhood Watch groups in states which had them, and other appropriate
bodies where Neighbourhood Watch did not exist.

As long-term strategy, an educational package on telephone vandalism was
developed by Telecom in conjunction with the Victorian Education Department for
trialling in Victorian schools with a view to inclusion in syllabuses in all
states.

As tests in New South Wales showed that electronic surveillance systems
worked, they are now to be used as part of combined police-Telecom operations in
areas with high rates of telephone vandalism.

Audible alarms were to be installed in some public telephones and Telecom
facilities where other means of prevention or detection would not be effective.

Devices are being fitted to phones to let Telecom know immediately if phones
are out of operation so they can be fixed quickly.

A small working party was set up to investigate the possibility of siting
telephones near police stations.

Commonwealth legislation was reviewed to clarify the powers of Telecom
investigators and Transport Investigation Branch members under the Crimes Act 1984.

An exchange of statistics between police and Telecom was recommended, and new
statistical reporting methods initiated.

Formal links were set up between Telecom and the New South Wales Police's
Co-ordinator of Street Crime.

Police on the beat are to be regularly reminded to pay particular attention to
public telephones.

When electronic surveillance operations are initiated by Telecom, police in
that area will be directed to provide immediate response.

Evaluation

After only one year, Telecom reports that the cost of repairing vandalised
telephones has dropped by $18 million to $9 million (Wilson 1990).

Statistics show a marked decrease in telephone vandalism in several states after
surveillance was stepped up and Kirk safes, coin safe "wave" doors and
modifications to the coin head mechanism were fitted.

For example, in South Australia and the Northern Territory, after a marked
upswing in vandalism incidents (anything from blocked coin shutes and minor
damage to theft of coin tins) in the last quarter of 1987-88 and the first
quarter of 1988-89, vandalism decreased dramatically - down from a high of 2,122
incidents in the last period of 1987-88 to a low of 201 in Period 10 of 1988-89
(Telecom Australia 1989). In the S.A. program, 1,800 coin safe "wave" doors
and 20 Kirk safes were fitted, and coin heads were modified.

Telephone vandalism has also decreased in Queensland, from 29,945 incidents in
1987-88 to 17,613 in 1988-89. After Telecom in New South Wales implemented
proactive surveillance and installed Kirk safes, vandalism and theft fell -
from 215 people arrested and 325 charges of damage and 293 incidents of stealing
laid in 1986-87 to 101 arrests and 72 and 68 charges respectively in 1988-89.

Following this preventive program, telephone vandalism and theft increased in
Victoria, indicating some displacement. Telecom responded with a campaign of
arresting gangs of offenders and modifying equipment to thwart each new breaking
method. Proactive surveillance and target hardening now have the breakings rate
down to almost zero, the only exception being attacks with an oxy welder
(Telecom Australia 1989, personal communication).

An educational campaign in the United Kingdom

Late in 1985, when half its payphones in Liverpool were out of commission at any
given time, British Telecom (BT) approached Merseyside Police in Liverpool to
help them design an educational package as a long-term approach to preventing
telephone vandalism.

Merseyside Police agreed, seeing this as a means of enhancing their Schools
Liaison Program. It took six months for Telecom and the Police Youth and
Community Branch to develop a package for primary schools called P.C. Payphone.
Telecom were also developing a video with Mersey Television for secondary
schools called The Big Chance.

The P.C. Payphone character was created by a policeman using a suit containing
electronic equipment so he or she could talk to children and play the payphone
song and safety messages. Publicity material consisted of posters and leaflets
with the messages "Streetwise kids don't vandalise", "Stranger Danger", "Help,
Help, always play safe", and "It's good news, pass it on"; bookmarks containing
the words of the payphone song; a cassette of the payphone song; P.C. Payphone
badges and colouring and activity sheets.

Telecom provided large quantities of these to the Police at no cost. The kit
was introduced into schools in September 1986.

At the same time, BT modernised equipment, and this - plus the P.C. Payphone
material and many other factors - led to a significant drop in payphone
vandalism. In one area, payphone revenue increased by 500 per cent (Merseyside
Police Public Relations Department 1988). In 1987 the Merseyside program was
adopted nationally by Telecom. So far, over 30 police forces are using the P.C.
Payphone character.

Public telephones in police stations in the United Kingdom

Early in 1987 British Telecom installed 10 public payphones in three selected
police stations in Liverpool for a trial period of 12 months. Police stations
were chosen on the basis of a high incidence of payphone vandalism, few private
telephones in the area, and the suitability of the police station for
installation. As well, four payphone boxes were re-sited on public
thoroughfares outside two police stations where there were few phones.

Results were excellent, with no damage caused to any of the 14 phones in or near
police stations. Merseyside Police did not charge British Telecom rent for the
sites, and revenue went to the phone company. After nine months, Telecom had
made enough profit to consider installing a second phone in one police station
in an area where large numbers of Black and Asian people lived. The police
believe the existence of the phones has drawn into the station many Black and
Asian people who would otherwise be too frightened to enter.

As a spin-off, British Telecom have agreed to install display panels in phone
boxes containing crime prevention material and community information, both in
police stations and at other sites.

An excellent article by Jane Sykes in Designing Against Vandalism (1979) is the
source of the following design tips for minimising vandalism in public places.

Vandal-proof materials

Ideal targets for vandals are interior surfaces in places like public toilets
and subways that are open to the public but private enough for vandals to go
undetected.

Their walls can be covered with tough, glazed ceramic tiles. Special
vandal-proof tiles that look attractive but will not readily mark or scratch are
available.

Plastic laminates can be used as panels to protect surfaces.

Special non-stick, non-mark paints and coatings based on polyurethanes such as
fluorocarbonates are available for both internal and external surfaces.

Special solvents for removing graffiti in any medium from paint to lipstick,
felt tip to oil, and for both easy-to-clean and untreated surfaces can be
purchased.

Ribbed metal sheet, rough-textured bricks or roughcast surfaces can be used in
buildings to resist damage. These are not easy to clean, however, and may act
as a challenge to vandals.

Lighting

Good lighting deters vandals, but because it is permanent and unguarded, it also
attracts vandalism itself. The vulnerable parts of lighting are the luminaire
and the doors to control gear compartments in columns.

It is ideal to put luminaires out of reach, either by placing them on high
columns or attaching them high up the walls of buildings.

Columns should not be sited near walls or low buildings where people can climb
them to gain access to property or other buildings.

Lighting equipment should not be located in hidden corners or behind buildings
where it can easily be tampered with.

Lighting should be regularly and systematically checked and repaired.

The actual equipment should be sturdy and durable with the sort of finish that
is not easily marked or scratched. Materials should not corrode, not be readily
bent or deformed, and fixings should be hidden wherever possible, leaving
nothing that could be torn off or opened.

Lanterns made for mounting on a plain pole and with the control gear
incorporated into them are comparatively safe from interference.

Avoid using column doors protecting control gear on the bottom of columns by
housing the control gear for a group of lamp standards separately in a
specially-designed tamper-proof unit.

Replace glass with tough plastic materials such as polycarbonate.

Street furniture

The same principles apply to street furniture as to lighting - strong
construction, good surfaces, non-corrodible materials and fixings, hidden
fastenings, avoidance of projecting or easily removable parts, sensible siting,
and regular maintenance. It should also be easy to repair.

Damage to some items - street signs, for example - can be prevented by placing
them out of reach.

Vandal-resistant plastics can be used for glazing in items like bus shelters,
illuminated bollards and traffic lights.

Furniture which must be accessible - rubbish bins, seats, parking meters -
should be sited so it does not provide ways of climbing walls or into buildings.

In high-vandalism areas, replace conventional litter bins with those made in
vandal-resistant materials and if necessary, attach to lamp-posts with extra
strong steel bands.

Ground-level furniture - seats, bins, pedestrian guard rails etc. - should be
fixed in the ground at a reasonable depth, and the pavement or road surfacing
around them should be properly finished off to discourage disturbance.

Furniture that is not fixed should be too heavy to remove easily.

Parking meters should have flush-fitting doors that allow no gap for levering
open; the doors should have hidden internal hinges and tamper-proof lock; they
should be in a strong material to resist attack.

Lavatories and public conveniences

The employment of a supervisor is desirable in public conveniences, but much can
be achieved by design.

Exposed pipes are particularly vulnerable and can cause flooding if damaged,
so they should be hidden behind strong panels with tamperproof fastenings. A
locked door, preferably outside the lavatory, should give access to the plumbing
for maintenance.

Fit stainless steel units if sanitary units are continually smashed.

To stop sinks blocking and flooding, install spray taps, remove plugs, and
build channels in the floor to drain off excess water.

To stop people pilfering toilet rolls, jumbo-sized rolls weighing 2 and 3 kg
are available - they are difficult to remove without attracting attention.

Ashtrays should be provided only in lavatories with attendants. Where there
is no attendant, surfaces should not be inflammable; ceramic tiles can replace
plastics, for example.

A crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) approach

A quick look around shows that bus shelters, lights and other street furniture
are vandalised in some locations, but remain untouched in others. An analysis
of the location, taking into consideration such crime prevention through
environmental design (CPTED) factors such as:

could isolate factors which either encourage or prevent vandalism of or graffiti
on publicly-owned facilities. It might be simpler and cheaper to relocate a
bus-stop or a phone box than constantly to repair or repaint it. An analysis of
the vandalism potential of a particular location can also help architects decide
what sorts of materials to use - antique street lamps may survive in some
precincts, for example, and be smashed immediately in others.

For up-to-date American responses to preventing vandalism in public areas, for
example damage to turf, picnic areas, signs, trails, lavatories and graffiti,
consult J. Bruce Shattuck's Vandalism in Public Park Facilities: A Guide for
Park Managers, published by Publishing Horizons, Columbus, Ohio in 1987.

A careful examination of strategies and programs tried in a number of countries
to reduce vandalism and graffiti reveals a number of general principles:

Planning and design: Planners, builders and architects can play a vital role
in reducing vandalism and graffiti in public housing and public places by
designing spaces which are attractive, which foster a sense of ownership in
users and which are defensible - that is, which incorporate design factors which
minimise the opportunities for vandalism and graffiti.

Management policies and practices: Management policies which foster a sense
of ownership and responsibility in tenants, and management practices such as
constant maintenance and quick repairs, sensible tenant allocation, and a fair
eviction policy have been shown to reduce vandalism and graffiti in public
housing estates.

Building standards: Faulty design and inappropriate material selection and
specification result in building defects, which are widely regarded as one of
the major triggers of vandalism. Architects and builders need to be aware of
the use to which buildings will be put and ensure materials and fixtures will be
strong enough to withstand everyday wear and tear, careless use and even misuse.

Maintenance and repairs: Damage attracts more damage, so vandalised property
should be repaired as quickly as possible, and graffiti should be removed before
it attracts imitators.

Materials: Wherever economically feasible, vandalproof materials should be
used. This could include surfaces which resist paint or are easy to clean,
unbreakable glass and plastics, and durable fixtures with no removable parts.

Education programs: Imaginative campaigns in schools can help children
realise the consequences of vandalism and graffiti and discourage them from
these activities.

Community responsibility: Promoting a sense of responsibility and ownership
in the whole community for those services and facilities which belong to
everyone - through programs such as Neighbourhood Watch, School Watch, Rail
Watch, etc. - can help reduce intentional damage.

Alternative activities: Sports, leisure and entertainment programs for
children and teenagers can reduce their boredom and sense of alienation and
divert them from antisocial activities.

Legal outlets: Programs which give graffitists the chance to practice their
art in an officially sanctioned way - on hoardings donated by developers or on
walls set aside for murals, for example - can help reduce illegal spraypainting.

Attacking the tools: Measures such as developing easy to remove paints and
better solvents, requiring retailers to tighten up security on spraypaint
displays, retricting the sale of spraypaints to adults, or even banning the sale
of spraypaints completely are under consideration in countries where graffiti is
a problem.

Surveillance: Increased surveillance, through professional security patrols
or guards - or more expensively via closed circuit television - can be required
in heavily vandalised areas where the benefits outweigh the costs.

Target hardening: Stronger locks and frames on doors, windows storerooms and
cupboards in schools can deter some inexperienced and opportunistic thieves, and
safes can stop professional burglars.

Sensible security practices: Much opportunistic burglary, vandalism and arson
could be prevented in schools if staff and students were impressed with the need
to put valuable equipment away after use, to lock up after themselves, and to
remember to turn on electronic security surveillance before they leave the
building.

Information sharing: Comprehensive statistics should be kept on vandalism so
the scope of the problem can be understood, and methods of preventing vandalism
and graffiti and repairing vandalised property should be shared among victims.

FACILITY(Primary school, all schools,etc.)

All schools

PROBLEM(one problem per bulletin)

Marking and chipping of walls in corridors

USER BEHAVIOUR(How is it done?)

Pupils scrape along with their gears, bags, pens, etc

USER MOTIVATION(why do they do it?)

CONSEQUENCES(short and long term direct and indirect results)

Progressive deterioration and drabness

SOLUTIONS(all tried problem remedies)

Use a material which is sturdy and when marked will not show clearly, e.g polyurethane on sheet chipboard or plywood

COMMENTS(Notes on relative success or failure of solution, or related issues)

We do not know of a cheap (there are costly ones) unmarkable wall material yet made, e.g one which cannot be damaged at all.

There is a possibility that technology will develop a material that will withstand impacts and still remain in a pristine state.

REFERENCES

NZS 2239

contributed by: P GROVE, EDUCATION DEPT, WGTON

(52.5)I(A3)CI/SfBdate: April 1984

SUBJECT

DOWNPIPES

FACILITY(Primary school, all schools,etc.)

All schools

PROBLEM(one problem per bulletin)

Roof access

USER BEHAVIOUR(How is it done?)

Downpipes used as climbing aids

USER MOTIVATION(why do they do it?)

To gain access to roof for various legitimate and improper reasons.

CONSEQUENCES(short and long term direct and indirect results)

Damaged downpipes, sproutings.

Surface flooding, water damage.

SOLUTIONS(all tried problem remedies)

Provide ladder for access to roof and retrieval of balls etc, under supervised conditions.

Wrap barbed wire around downpipes to inhibit their use as climbing aids.

COMMENTS(Notes on relative success or failure of solution, or related issues)

on 2. This solution used in some schools is counter-productive, antagonises users of the environment and will provoke further vandalism. See reference - Sommer.

Brull Associates, William 1979a, Planning for Housing Security: Site Security
Analysis Manual, Prepared for Office of Policy Development and Research, US
Department of Housing and Urban Development, USGPO, Washington DC.

Burral, P. 1979 in Sykes.

---- 1979b, Planning for Housing Security: Site Elements Manual , Prepared for
Office of Policy Development and Research, US Department of Housing and Urban
Development, USGPO, Washington DC.

Sarkissian, Wendy 1984, Design Guidelines to Reduce Security and Vandalism
Problems in Medium-Density Housing in Australia, Report of a Research Project
funded by the Criminology Research Council, Canberra and supported by the New
South Wales Housing Commission, Sydney.